


Ad astra per aspera

by marvel_middleearth



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Everyone Needs A Hug, Fluff, Natasha Romanov Feels, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Sad, Tony Stark Feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-20
Updated: 2019-07-15
Packaged: 2020-05-15 06:14:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 20,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19289854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marvel_middleearth/pseuds/marvel_middleearth
Summary: “I don’t want to leave him,” Peter tells her, tears streaming down his face. “Please, I can’t leave him.”She doesn’t tell him he has to leave him. She doesn’t tell him that Tony is gone, that Tony is never coming back, ever.But she doesn’t need to, because Peter knows.And that hurts more than anything in the world.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So
> 
> I first saw Endgame on the 24th, so it's been close to 2 months since I first saw it
> 
> This fic is basically me pouring out all of my emotions after Endgame into one monster of a fic that started out as a couple of snippets of story and is now over 11 000 words.
> 
> In case you haven't realised and have somehow not seen Endgame yet, THERE ARE SPOILERS FOR AVENGERS: ENDGAME IN THIS FIC. You have been warned.
> 
> If you have time, kudos and comments are much appreciated :) If you have questions or just want to scream about Endgame, the comments section is all yours.
> 
> That being said...here it is.

“Tears are words the mouth can’t say nor can the heart bear.” **– Joshua Wisenbaker**

 

 

_No._

_No._

_No._

_No._

_This is a nightmare._

_This can’t be real._

_No._

_No._

**_No._ **

**_Please._ **

_Oh God please no._

_Please, please, please no._

_NoNO_ **_NO_ **

**_NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO_ **

“No, _please,”_ Peter sobs, but Rhodey’s hands on his shoulders are holding him tightly and there are tears on Pepper’s face and Tony’s eyes are dull and empty.

The arc reactor flickers and goes dark.

Peter feels like his heart has shattered.

_Nothing is ever going to be the same again_

 

 

Peter sobs.

Rhodey’s arms are around him but Peter doesn’t notice. All he can see in front of him is Pepper, leaning her head against Tony’s chest – _it’s so still, it’s too still_ – her shoulders shaking as she cries into the metal of his armour.

All he can see in front of him is Tony, slumped against the rubble, his armour – _oh God, Peter had loved the red and gold of his armour so much_ – dented and scratched, his eyes unseeingly, forever open and staring.

_Please wake up. Please. Oh, God, Mr Stark, please wake up._

But Peter knows.

Tony is never going to wake up.

_Nothing is ever going to be the same again_

 

 

The other Avengers stand around him.

They’re crying too, but Peter barely notices.

They stand there for half an hour, heads bowed, cheeks wet with tears, none of them unaffected. Some stand in silent vigil, others cry quietly with their arms around each other’s shoulders.

Some, like Peter, sink shakily to the ground and sob into their hands.

_Nothing is ever going to be the same again_

 

 

Someone was pulling him away.

Away from Tony, away from Pepper.

_No._

_I can’t leave him._

_I don’t want to leave him, please._

He doesn’t realise he’s sobbing the words until someone rubs a hand on his back, until a voice filters quietly into his thoughts. “I know. But you have to.”

He can barely summon the will to lift his head, let alone stand. Through tear-blurred eyes he sees her: the battle-hardened woman with the short blonde hair, the one he gave the gauntlet to earlier in the battle. _Before all this. Before Tony…_

No. He can’t say it. He can’t, he _won’t_ even let himself _think_ of it.

“I don’t want to leave him,” he tells her, tears streaming down his face. “Please, I can’t leave him.”

She doesn’t tell him he has to leave him. She doesn’t tell him that Tony is gone, that Tony is never coming back, _ever._

But she doesn’t need to, because Peter knows.

And that hurts more than anything in the world.

_Nothing is ever going to be the same again_

 

 

Peter sits silently on the quinjet with tears on his face.

The blonde-haired warrior sits next to him – he’s picked up that her name is Carol. Her arm is around his shoulders, firm and reassuring, like she's trying to protect him from something. Her face is shadowed with grief.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, Peter appreciates that she has pulled herself together enough to comfort Peter. But it’s not enough. He barely knows her.

The only person he wants, the only person he needs right now, is lying lifeless on the floor of the second quinjet.

Tears stream down his face. He closes his eyes, but the image of Tony slumped against the rubble is burned into the back of his eyelids.

_Nothing is ever going to be the same again_

 

 

The Avengers compound is in ruins.

They move to an old S.H.I.E.L.D. base. It’s empty and it takes some dusting off before it’s usable, but everyone who can muster the strength to help out does, and soon the base is liveable.

They assign rooms. Peter doesn’t listen. He doesn’t really care, not anymore.

Eventually they all end up sitting together in an old troop common room, furnished with couches that are surprisingly comfortable by S.H.I.E.L.D. standards. Peter Quill looks stunned, sitting beside the other Guardians in a state of disbelief. Wanda is crying into her hands. Pepper meets everyone’s gazes bravely as Rhodey, tears on his face, guides her to the couch. Peter can barely meet Pepper’s eyes. She looks distraught, her normally composed façade completely broken away.

After the silence drags on for what feels like an eternity to Peter, Rhodey speaks. “We…uh. We brought him inside.” Peter has never heard the colonel’s voice so shaky. “So, if anyone…if anyone wants to…to say g-goodbye…”

Peter muffles a sob behind his hand. Pepper is as white as a sheet except for her eyes, which are rimmed with red and brimming with tears.

Bucky seems to notice something, and glances around the room. A small frown settles across his brow. “Where’s Natasha?” he asks quietly.

Peter _feels_ the atmosphere of the room chill, as though they’ve all suddenly been plunged into ice. He glances up and sees the confused expressions on the faces of most of the others, noting numbly for himself that the assassin isn’t here.

“Where’s Natasha?” Bucky repeats, and when Peter scans the room again, his gaze catches on the miserable expressions of some of the Avengers: Steve, Rhodey, Bruce, Clint, Carol. There’s even a flicker of emotion in Nebula’s dark eyes.

Steve seems to steel himself. “She…” he begins, but he’s barely got the words out when Clint stands and abruptly leaves the room. The silence feels even heavier in his wake.

“Steve.” It’s Wanda, and there’s desperation in her voice. “Where’s Nat?”

“She…” Steve starts again. His blue eyes are darker than Peter has ever seen them, like storm-tossed oceans of grief and Steve is struggling to ride the waves.

“The soul stone demanded a sacrifice and Natasha made it,” Bruce breaks in. He stares at the ground, resolutely avoiding the gazes of the others. “She gave her life so we could bring you all back.”

The shocked silence that descends upon the room feels vast. Peter feels his heart flutter, feels his hands tremble. “W-what?” he stutters. The words feel distant, like they’re not his, this question that he can barely hear above the roaring in his ears, the pounding of his heart.

“She’s _dead_ ,” Bruce says roughly, but everyone can hear the anguish in his voice before he buries his face in his palms.

Sam looks stunned. Bucky freezes, blank and uncomprehending. Wanda claps a hand over her mouth, fresh tears in her eyes.

And Peter feels _shattered._ The world spins and blurs behind his tears, like a photograph dropped into a river, the colours distorting together until all that’s left is the dark and the light, battling for control until the river washes it all away.

This time, it’s the dark that wins.

_Natasha Romanoff is dead._

Peter wants so desperately for that not to be true. Because he doesn’t know how much more his already-fractured self can take. Because he doesn’t know how he’ll cope if he’s lost not one, but two of the people he admires most in the world.

Because how _can_ it be true? He’d barely met her, but her reputation preceded her, and in his eyes – and the eyes of everyone else, because who didn’t both idolise and fear her? – Natasha Romanoff was one of the strongest women on earth. In Peter’s mind, the world could have been ripped apart beneath her feet and Natasha would still remain standing. The world could have fallen to pieces, descended into chaos, and Natasha would still be there at the end of it all with her head held high and barely a hair out of place. Natasha, her auburn hair glowing like flames, her mouth twisted into a confident smirk, her green eyes dark with the secrets they hold.

_How can she be gone?_

Peter stares at the floor, the tiles blurring like a washed-out photograph behind his tears.

_Nothing is ever going to be the same again_

 

 

Peter doesn’t know how long he’s been staring at the same patch of floor.

He doesn’t want to move. He doesn’t want this to be real. He wants to close his eyes right now and let this all vanish. He wants to open his eyes and see Mr Stark standing in front of him, a smirk on his face, his arc reactor glowing brightly on his chest, his brown eyes glittering with familiar warmth.

But when he opens his eyes, all he sees is the same blank floor. All he hears is the same soft squeak of hinges as people walk in and out of the room, the sobs from down the hallway, the muffled murmur of voices lowered in sorrow.

For once, he absolutely hates his enhanced hearing. He can hear almost every word sobbed out in the room down the hallway, hear every grief-stricken conversation. He can hear the quiet way Happy says, “Someone needs to get the kid,” and Rhodey’s quiet response of “I’ll do it.”

Someone crouches in front of him. It’s Rhodey – even if he hadn’t overheard their conversation, he would have recognised the robotic supports securing his legs. They’re bashed and dented, but they’re still whole, and Peter feels tears prick his eyes as he remembers who made them. The same person who made the Iron Spider suit he’s still wearing, the same person who only hours ago stared at Peter with disbelief and love on his face before grasping him in a hug, tears in his eyes.

“Kid?” Peter knows Rhodey means it kindly, but he can’t help but flinch at the nickname. “Peter? Do you want to…to come and say goodbye?”

Peter wants to say no. Oh, _God,_ how desperately he wants to say no. Because only earlier today, he had been saying hello to Tony, seeing him again after what had turned out to be _five whole years._ It isn’t fair that he gets to come back to life, but Tony doesn’t. It isn’t fair at all.

But he doesn’t say no. Instead, he lifts his head to meet Rhodey’s eyes. He attempts to keep his face straight, but his eyes are brimming with tears and his steady expression waivers. “I wish I didn’t have to,” he whispers.

He sees his own pain reflected in Rhodey’s eyes. “So do I, Peter,” he replies quietly. “So do I.”

Rhodey holds out a hand and Peter takes it, feeling small and fragile. Suddenly he’s six again, clutching his uncle’s hand tightly as he stares at his parents’ graves, but this time it’s Rhodey he’s clinging to, not Ben.

_I’m not ready for this._

_I’m not ready for this._

_I’m not –_

The door swings open.

Peter stops dead in his tracks.

Tony is _there,_ but at the same time he isn’t. His body is there, lying motionless on a white sheet on the floor, still wearing his red-and-gold armour that is so familiar it _hurts._ Someone’s closed his eyes and he looks almost peaceful, if it weren’t for the dark burn marks scarring one half of his face.

_You can rest now._

It’s Tony but it’s not. It looks like him, but Tony isn’t _Tony_ without being alive. Tony isn’t _Tony_ without the charismatic sparkle in his brown eyes, without his voice, without his smile and his laughter and his tears and his frowns, and the way his voice hardens when he’s angry but lightens with humour when he’s happy, and the way his entire body radiates pride and love whenever he makes Peter laugh. Tony, lying here unmoving, isn’t the Tony Peter recognises.

Pepper is kneeling beside Tony’s head, stroking a hand through his hair as tears slip down her face. She offers Peter a shaky smile that Peter thinks is supposed to be reassuring, presses a kiss to Tony’s forehead and stands up, moving to Rhodey’s side. As she passes Peter the back of her hand brushes his, before she and Rhodey leave the room.

Peter stumbles to Tony’s side and sinks down next to him. It’s just him and Tony, a shadow of Tony, in a silent, blank-walled room. Peter’s hand finds its way into Tony’s undamaged one, his left hand, the one without the stones. The armour feels smooth and cool beneath his fingers.

He swallows a sob. “H-hey, Mr…Mr Stark.” His voice catches on the familiar name. “I’m h-here to say g-goodbye.”

He grips Tony’s hand tighter, dropping his head. He can’t bear to look at Tony’s face when it’s so still. “I-I don’t know how – I don’t know h-how to say goodbye. I don’t w-want to. I wish, I wish, I _wish_ I didn’t have to.”

God, he wishes that so bad.

Peter stares at his hand in Tony’s. He tries to memorise every detail of this moment: the exact hot-rod red and pure gold of Tony’s armour, glinting under the harsh white lights; the scratches and tiny chips in the paint that fleck its surface; the way the armour curls perfectly around Tony’s hand, like an extension of him, a second skin. That’s what it’s always been: Tony is Iron Man as much as Iron Man is Tony.

“I d-don’t know how I’m gonna l-live without y-you,” he weeps, and it’s the agonizing truth. Tony has become such a huge part of his life, Peter doesn’t know how to begin to fill the crater he’s left behind.

Peter takes a deep, trembling breath, gripping Tony’s hand tighter. “I-I could never work up the courage to t-tell you this while you were – you were – a-alive.” His entire body shudders with a sob. “I-I love you, Mr S-stark. I l-love you so, s-so much. You were like my d-dad. You were always t-there for me and I’m sorry, I’m so, so s-sorry I couldn’t be t-there for y-you.”

He hears the door open softly behind him, knows his time is almost up. He finally works up the courage to look at Tony’s face, lacing his fingers between Tony’s desperately. This is the last time he'll ever hold his hand. “I’ll n-never forget you, Mr Stark,” he whispers, his eyes tracing Tony’s face, ingraining the memory of him into his mind. “I love you.”

He feels someone take a gentle hold of his arm but he resists, clinging to Tony’s hand like a lifeline, because that’s what Tony’s always been to him: a lifeline to hold on to, a light in the darkness. Peter doesn’t know what to do now that light has gone out.

Tears are falling like rain down his face, glittering in the air for a fraction of a second before they land on Tony’s armour. His grief is uncontrollable now, his fingers clinging so tightly to Tony’s hand they’re turning white. “Mr Stark,” he sobs. _“Mr Stark.”_

Rhodey’s pulling him away from Tony and Peter’s heart is breaking all over again. He’s drained, exhausted with grief, and his hand slips from Tony’s.

Rhodey’s arms are around him again.

He’s being guided towards the door.

He twists his head, casts a last glance over his shoulder –

He catches one, final glimpse of Tony –

And then the door swings closed, shutting Peter off from Tony forever, and Peter falls to pieces in Rhodey’s arms.

_Nothing is ever going to be the same again._


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You ready?” Steve asks her.
> 
> May draws and releases a deep breath, then nods.
> 
> Steve opens the door.
> 
> And suddenly Peter is there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you SO MUCH to everyone who has already left comments or kudos on this fic!!! I'm actually so amazed and grateful to you all!! You're awesome!!! ❤
> 
> Some people have pointed this out to me and I feel like I should probably clarify, this fic is probably going to get dark at some points and has already hit some lows. It is, at its heart, a story dealing with death. If anything makes you uncomfortable/upset or you don't feel like reading it for any reason, either stop reading or stick around for the ending (which I can promise you will be as happy as I can make it). I just thought I should mention that - stay safe everyone ❤
> 
> If I've made a mistake somewhere along the way, suggestions are much appreciated :)
> 
> Here's chapter 2...

“So it’s true, when all is said and done, grief is the price we pay for love.” **– E.A. Bucchianeri**

 

 

When someone knocks on May Parker’s door at four-fifteen in the afternoon, May doesn’t hesitate to open the door. Usually, these days, it is Mrs Leeds – the two of them have become closer than ever recently, with the loss of both of their sons (well, nephew for May; but sometimes she finds herself forgetting Peter’s not really her son). Sometimes it is government workers or police officers, who are hard at work trying to stabilise New York in the aftermath of the Decimation. Once, five years ago, it had been Tony and Pepper. That had been one of the worst days of May’s life, matched only by the day Ben died and the day she had been told Richard and Mary’s plane had crashed.

That had been the day she had found out her nephew was gone.

She will never forget the haunted look in Tony Stark’s eyes that day.

To May, those days are living nightmares. They are days that have left her devastated and days she never wants to live through again.

When May opens the door, the last thing she expected is for today to be another nightmare.

She opens the door. Her hand slips limply from the doorknob. “Oh,” she says faintly.

“Ms Parker,” Captain America says solemnly. “I’m sorry to intrude. May I come in? There’s a lot I need to tell you.”

“I…of course. Come in.” May’s hand shakes slightly as she ushers him inside, shutting the door behind him. “Take a seat.” She directs him towards the couch. “Can I get you anything? Coffee? Tea?” She knows she is blathering, but she is nervous, and worried, and stressed. In recent years, it doesn’t take a lot to put May on edge. The awfulness of watching people turn to dust in the streets, seeing the chaos left in their absence, hearing Tony choke out the words confirming the death of her nephew…that had been horrible. Add onto that five years of living alone, with only the company of a few friends, and the stress of trying to find work in a world left empty and broken…May is stretched to near breaking point.

“No, thank you, Ms Parker,” Captain America replies politely, sitting down in the armchair beside the couch.

“There’s no need to ‘Ms Parker’ me, Captain,” May insists, a little of her firmness returning to her voice. “May will do fine.”

Captain America nods his understanding. “Likewise. Please, call me Steve.” He gestures for her to sit too.

May sinks slowly onto the couch, her eyes never leaving Steve’s face. Her mind is churning with worry and confusion.  _ Why is he here? _

“May, I’m not quite sure how not to put this bluntly,” Steve begins hesitantly. “Your nephew, Peter Parker, is alive.”

May freezes, staring at him uncomprehendingly. “W-what?” she whispers, not trusting herself to speak any louder.

“Your nephew is alive,” Steve repeats.

May feels her heart flutter. “Alive?” she whispers. “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.” She covers her mouth with one hand to hide some of her shock and relief, her eyes glittering with tears. “Where has he been? Is he okay? Where is he? I need to see him,  _ please _ .”

“He’s safe, at an old S.H.I.E.L.D. base upstate,” Steve replies. “After…everything that happened, we needed a place to stay, and the Avengers compound is…no longer an option. Everyone’s worn a little thin right now.” He hesitates. “I can escort you there…”

May rises to her feet. “Please. I need to – I’ve missed him  _ so much _ .” She wipes at the tears trickling down her cheeks, relief in her expression. Her heart is practically  _ soaring  _ with indescribable relief and joy.

_ Peter is alive Peter is alive Peter is alive he’s okay he’s alive he’s safe he’s back _

“May…” Steve says heavily, placing one hand on her arm, and it is then that May notices the grief in his eyes.

It is then May realizes he’d only said Peter is  _ safe,  _ not  _ okay. _

“Oh, God,” she whispers. “What happened? What happened to him?”

“May,” Steve begins again, his expression agonized. “Tony Stark is dead.”

May feels the news like a slap to the face. She stares at him, her eyes wide, searching his face for any sign he is joking. “Oh my God,” she whispers when she finds only sadness in his expression, dropping back into her seat, shock coursing through her. She lets out a breath of horrified disbelief and presses her hand against her mouth, tears filling her eyes, praying this is just a bad dream.  _ How can this be real?!  _ Her mind screams.  _ There is no way, ever, that Tony Stark could ever be – _

“He gave his life to save us all,” Steve says quietly, and this time it feels like someone has punched May in the stomach – she is winded, and breathless, and empty.

Suddenly, without realising it, she is crying. Weeping into her hands, her hair falling around her face, sorrow eating away at her like an insatiable beast. She doesn’t care for a moment what she must look like, doesn’t care for a moment that she is crying in front of Steve Rogers, a man who has been a hero of hers for many years. All she can think of is  _ how can this be happening?! How can this be real?! _

Today is, without doubt, a nightmare day.

 

 

Five minutes later, when May has pulled herself together with a fragile sense of control, she follows Steve down to the car. She feels empty. She had been happy for a few, precious seconds, upon finding out that Peter was alive. Now she is doused in misery. She can’t even begin to imagine how Peter is feeling.

May had always seen the bright spark that appeared in Peter’s eyes whenever he interacted with Tony, the warmth and excitement in his gaze whenever Tony ruffled Peter’s hair or smiled at something Peter had said. There’d been something special between those two, and May had picked up on it straight away. Tony was the father Peter had so scarcely had, and Peter was the son Tony had never looked for. May had been glad Peter had found a father in Tony. God knows the boy deserved it, after losing both of his parents and his uncle.

And God knows Peter doesn’t deserve this now. Hasn’t he had enough tragedy in his life? He is barely fifteen and yet now he’s lost four of the people closest to him. No, five – because Steve had told her what had happened to Natasha Romanoff. May had only met Natasha once, but her reputation preceded her, and there had been stars in Peter’s eyes when he’d introduced Nat to May. If Peter had loved Tony like a father, he’d loved Natasha like an aunt, if not an older sister.

May stares out of the window as they leave her apartment, tears still staining her face. But something catches her eye, and she begins to notice what is happening outside.

There are more people in the streets than there had been yesterday. That alone is strange enough: after the Decimation, New Yorkers have become more reserved, only leaving their homes when necessary – for food and supplies, to visit what family and friends they had left, or - in the case of some desperate few still clinging to hope - to beg the police for any news on the Vanished. But there are definitely far more people in the streets than what has become normal. Not only that, some of them are looking around in confusion, wide-eyed at the desolation. Others are embracing, crying, laughing.

_ They’re back. _

Everyone who had turned to dust is coming back.

May finds her eyes filling with tears again. 

 

 

May had felt like a mess of nerves in the car, but now, standing in an empty hallway of the S.H.I.E.L.D. base, knowing that her nephew was on the other side of the blank grey door, she feels ten times as nervous.

“Just remember…” Steve hesitates. “He’s been through a lot. He could be a very different person to the one you knew.”

May can feel her heart pounding and she mentally slaps herself.  _ You’re going to see your nephew!  _ She reminds herself.  _ You know him! He’s lived with you since he was six! _

_ He’s also been missing for five years,  _ a small voice reminds her.

“You ready?” Steve asks her.

May draws and releases a deep breath, then nods.

Steve opens the door.

And suddenly he is  _ there.  _ Right in front of her, only a few metres away, sitting on the edge of an empty bed. A blonde-haired woman wearing a battle-torn red-and-blue suit is crouched in front of him, one hand resting on his knee, talking to him in a low voice. She glances around as May enters, her eyes flicking over May and then finding Steve standing in the doorway behind her.

Peter lifts his head slowly. May suddenly finds herself rooted to the spot; her breath catches in her throat. He is covered in dust and dirt, his face pale beneath the grime, his eyes rimmed with red. He is wearing a version of his Spider-Man suit that seems to be made of metal, light glinting off the dents and scratches on its surface. His hair falls lankly across his forehead, matted with sweat, dirt and something that looks terrifyingly like blood. There is a scratch across his cheek, but he otherwise looks physically unhurt.

But it is the look in his eyes that terrifies May. As though it isn’t enough that his eyes are rimmed with red and his cheeks tear-stained, as though he has been crying recently, there is something  _ very  _ wrong about his expression. His eyes are dark and haunted. May only has to take one look at him to know that he is shaken to his very soul.

Tony’s death hasn’t just broken him.

Tony’s death has shattered him into a million pieces.

It seems to take a moment for Peter to recognise her, but when he does he stands up immediately, his eyes never leaving her. “Aunt May,” he whispers, and the next moment he has flung himself into her arms.

“Oh,  _ Peter,”  _ May sobs into his hair, holding him to her as tightly as she can. Peter’s hands grip the back of her shirt and she can feel, oh God she can  _ feel  _ him shaking uncontrollably as he cries into her shoulder. He feels smaller than she remembers, more fragile, as though if May hugs him too hard, he might shatter. “Oh, Peter, I’m so sorry, honey, I’m so,  _ so _ sorry,” she whispers.

They stand there for what feels like hours, May rubbing circles on Peter’s back and pressing kisses into his hair reassuringly, Peter crying in her arms and mumbling her name in between sobs. When they finally draw apart Peter seems reluctant to let go of her, his eyes never leaving her face. There is something desperate in them, something terrified and scared. “You’re really here, aren’t you?” he asks, anxiously watching for her reaction. “This isn’t just a dream?”

“I’m here, Peter. I’m here,” May assures him, her eyes filling with tears again. “I’m really here this time.”

Peter clutches her hand tightly, tears still streaming down his face. “May – May, I – he – he’s g-gone…” he whispers, his expression stricken, barely forcing out the words. “H-he…”

“I know,” May breaks in softly, raising a hand to brush his tears away gently. “Oh, Peter, I know. I’m so, so sorry, honey. I’m so sorry.”

Peter bites his lip and squeezes his eyes shut, his expression agonized. “I should have s-saved him,” he chokes out.

“There was nothing any of us could have done,” the blonde-haired woman says quietly from behind Peter, her expression sad. “If there was, we would have done it, Peter. You know we all would have done anything to save him.”

May sees the moment Peter’s heart breaks just a little bit more: she sees his eyes darken with grief, the shadows growing stronger as his face pales, the slight sag of his shoulders, the tears pooling in the corners of his eyes before spilling down his cheeks. And as her nephew leans back against her, fresh sobs shaking his thin frame, May holds him close and lets him cry in her arms.

They are all broken.

But some of them are more broken than others.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, I'm so grateful to everyone who reads this!! Thank you so much!! :)


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Peter?” Pepper walks up to where he’s sitting somehow still semi-composed, her strawberry-blonde hair as neat as ever. She smiles gently at him. “There’s someone I want you to meet.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's chapter 3, which brings the introduction of some new characters...

“It's sad when someone you _know_ becomes someone you _knew_ .” **– Henry Rollins**

 

 

There is just under an hour until Tony Stark’s funeral starts and Peter is not ready.

He stands on the front porch of the Starks’ house, his hands on the wooden railing. He stares out towards the lake and watches the soft breeze stir up tiny waves across the water’s surface, making them glitter and dance as they catch the sunlight. The same breeze blows faintly across his face, ruffling his hair and tugging gently at his black suit jacket. He can’t decide quite how he feels: he’s both full of emotion and strangely empty at the same time.

He hears hesitant footsteps on the porch behind him and glances over his shoulder, not recognising the sound. Everyone else he can discern by the sound of their walk: Pepper’s soft but poised, May’s defined and full of purpose, Tony’s casual and confident. He can’t tell who this is.

Peter meets the uncertain blue-eyed gaze of a boy about his own age. “Um, hey,” he says awkwardly, running a hand through his curly brown hair. “Mind if I join you? It’s getting crowded inside, and I kinda feel like I’m in the way.”

Peter gives a tiny shrug. “Sure,” he manages to croak out.

The boy makes his way over to Peter and rests his arms lightly on the railing, following Peter’s gaze out towards the lake. “I’m Harley, by the way. Harley Keener,” he says after a few moments of silence.

“Peter Parker,” Peter replies shortly. He’s not angry, just exhausted. He’s tired of being sad, tired of living in a world without Tony Stark. He feels slightly sick thinking about just how much more of it he’s going to have to take, for the rest of his life. There's no escaping it. This life without Tony is forever, and Peter can't even begin to describe to the despair he feels just thinking about that.

“You knew Tony?” Harley asks. He sounds curious, but still calm and respectful.

Peter swallows the lump in his throat. “Y-yeah,” he manages to mumble. “Yeah, I knew him.”

“How well?” Harley catches Peter’s glance and his expression drops. “Sorry. I just – I knew him too. We weren’t super close, but we were close enough, even though I haven’t physically seen him in nearly ten years. I guess it’s just a new experience for me – meeting other people who knew him sorta like I did.” He looks out onto the lake again. “Sorry.”

Peter focuses on the breeze ruffling his hair for a moment before he speaks. “I, uh, I knew him pretty well.” He takes a few deep breaths, trying to think of how to describe the complex relationship he’d shared with Tony. “I was his, uh, his intern. But also more than that, in a way. I was sort of like his…”

“Like his son, even though he wouldn’t admit it?” Harley suggests. When Peter glances at him in surprise, he gives a wry smile. “It’s such a Tony thing to do,” he explains. “I only spent a few days with him in person but he’s impossible to forget. Even though I annoyed the hell out of him every time I opened my mouth, I felt a connection, I guess. My dad walked out on us when I was little, and I guess Tony sort of…fell into his place, in a way. He always denied it, but I had a dad long enough for me to know what paternal love looks like.”

“Similar story with me,” Peter agrees. “My parents died when I was little, and my uncle died a few years back, so I just live with my aunt now. I don’t think Tony ever _meant_ to become my father figure. I think he kind of picked it up, somewhere along the way.” He manages a watery smile, even though his eyes are burning with unshed tears. “I just wish I could have…” His voice breaks and he stops, taking a deep breath and summoning the will to continue. “I just wish I could have had more time with him.”

“Me too,” Harley says softly.

They both fall silent, watching the breeze make the grass shiver. The silence isn’t awkward anymore; it’s just quiet, contemplative, both boys lost in their heads and their memories of Tony.

And when May quietly walks out onto the balcony a few minutes later to check on Peter, neither Peter nor Harley hear her; but May doesn’t disturb them. She just smiles softly at the two boys, standing side-by-side on the porch with nearly-identical brown hair and black suits, united in their grief but also maybe, just maybe, helping each other to heal.

 

 

After the funeral, Peter doesn’t feel like talking to anyone. He lets May lead him back inside, feeling numbly, only able to muster a nod for Harley and a single word at most for everyone else. May sits him down on the couch and stands next to him, her hand comfortingly on his shoulder as she talks to Hope and Scott, who have barely left each other’s side since the battle ended. Around Peter, the mood of the people assembled in the room shifts slightly. People are starting to talk and to smile a bit more. In the kitchen, Thor is telling the story of the battle against Loki and his army back in 2012, a happily reminiscent expression on his face, his voice growing in volume as the tale progresses. Clint and Wanda have disappeared outside; last Peter saw them, they were standing beside the lake and talking in low voices.

“Peter?” Pepper walks up to where he’s sitting somehow still semi-composed, her strawberry-blonde hair as neat as ever. She smiles gently at him. “There’s someone I want you to meet.”

Peter _stares._ Because for a heartbeat, as he glances into a pair of hauntingly familiar brown eyes, he swears he is looking at Tony.

Instead he’s looking at a little girl that is undeniably Tony and Pepper’s daughter. Her chocolate-coloured hair falls around her face and she peeks shyly out from underneath it, clutching her mom’s hand but somehow still radiating a charm that reminds Peter of so strongly of Tony he almost gasps aloud.

“Peter, this is Morgan.” Pepper stoically musters a smile. “Morgan, this is Peter. He’s a friend…he’s a friend of Daddy’s.”

“I know him,” Morgan says boldly, startling Peter. “Daddy has a picture of him. On the shelf in the kitchen.”

“That’s right,” Pepper agrees, but Peter can barely hear her over the words in his ears.

_Tony has a picture of me on his shelf?_

He feels like crying, but, taking a leaf out of Pepper’s book, he manages to force a smile onto his face. “It’s great to meet you, Morgan.”

Morgan gives him a shy half-smile, and again Peter is struck by just how similar to Tony she looks. She tugs on Pepper’s hand and whispers in her ear when Pepper bends down. Pepper smiles at Morgan’s whisper. “You’ll have to ask him yourself, sweetie.”

Morgan nods seriously and looks up at Peter with wide eyes. “Do you wanna come and see my tent?” she asks. “Daddy made it for me for my birthday.”

Peter can’t help but smile. “I-I would love to see your tent,” he replies, holding out his hand. “That would be awesome.”

Morgan glances up at her mother for confirmation before taking hold of Peter’s hand, her tiny hand gripping Peter’s firmly. “It’s this way,” she says, pointing to the front door. She has the same determined tilt to her chin that Tony had, and the same confident stride, so that as she leads him past the other Avengers they automatically step out of the way, smiling at the little girl pulling the teenager along behind her.

Morgan leads Peter down the porch steps and across the yard to where a little tent and chair is set up, on a grassy area overlooking the lake. She proudly shows him her tent, beaming when she presents him with her Avengers toys. “Mommy and Daddy got them for me for my birthday,” she says happily, before sitting down on the grass to play with them. Peter sits down beside her, content just to watch her play.

Eventually, Morgan abandons her toys and shuffles closer to Peter, following his gaze out to the lake, the far shores hazy in the distance. “My daddy said he loved me 3000,” Morgan says after a moment of silence, fiddling with a strand of her dark hair.

Peter smiles softly. “Yeah? 3000, huh? That’s a…that’s a lot.”

“Uh-huh. That’s what Daddy said too,” Morgan agrees. She slips her small hand into his. “I think he loved you 3000, too.”

Tears spring to Peter’s eyes and for a moment, he can’t speak. Morgan glances up at him, her cocoa-coloured eyes round and worried. “Are you sad?” she asks, and her expression is as heartfelt as a four-year-old can get.

“Yes,” Peter answers honestly. “Yeah, Morgan, I’m sad.”

“Oh.” Morgan blinks. “Are you sad about my daddy?”

Peter glances up at the ceiling, trying to blink back tears. “Yeah, I am.”

“I’m sad about my daddy sometimes too.” She frowns, little wrinkles appearing on her brow. “I want him to come back. It’s not fair. Why did he have to go away? I need someone to tell me bedtime stories.”

Peter squeezes her hand. “I want him to come back too,” he murmurs. “But it…doesn’t always roll that way.” He bites his lip, tasting blood. “Your dad saved everyone, Morgan. He’s a hero. He’s the best of us.”

“I know he saved everyone. Everybody keeps saying that to me. But that doesn’t mean he has to go away,” Morgan insists. “It’s not fair. He needs to read me bedtime stories. He needs to help Mommy replant the garden. He needs to see you again.” Her pout deepens. “Daddy said that if I was good and Captain America didn’t need his shield back, he’d let me take it sledding. And Daddy promised that when I was bigger he’d let me help him in the garage. Daddy _never_ breaks his promises.”

Peter starts when he realises the little girl’s eyes are rapidly filling with tears of hurt and anger. “Morgan…” he says softly.

“It’s not fair,” she whimpers. She’s so like Tony in her determination to stay strong, to stop the tears from falling, that it makes Peter’s heart ache even more.

“I know, Morgan,” Peter whispers. “I know. And I’m sorry.”

Before Peter can comprehend what’s happening, Morgan has thrown herself into his arms. Peter’s arms go around her small frame, hugging the four-year-old close to him as he can. He can feel her trembling as she cries, and he hugs her closer. His hand moves to stroke her dark hair, the way Tony used to card through his, and he bites back tears.

The world has turned full circle. Where once Tony had held him as he sobbed, now he holds Tony’s daughter as she cries into his shoulder.

Morgan’s sobs eventually subside, but she doesn’t move from Peter’s arms. The front of Peter’s suit jacket is soaked with tears. He doesn’t care. Morgan’s only four and she’s lost her father. Peter knows how that feels. He still faintly remembers being in Morgan’s position after his parent’s funeral, May hugging him tightly and whispering words now lost to the haze of time and memory.

Pepper finds them like that five minutes later. She doesn’t speak or disturb them; she doesn’t tell them that they need to come inside, or point out that Morgan’s dress is getting crumpled from the way she’s sitting on Peter’s lap. She just sits down beside him, her blue eyes filled with a grief that suddenly makes her look much older than she is. Morgan climbs into her mother’s lap, still firmly gripping Peter’s hand.

Peter shifts slightly, feeling awkward. He feels intrusive, like he shouldn’t be here. It feels personal and private all of a sudden, a moment between family. He’s not their family.

Pepper catches his arm gently. Her eyes are soft but questioning. _Where are you going?_ They seem to ask.

“I’m not…” Peter goes to say. _I’m not a part of your family. I’m not a part of this moment._

“You are,” Pepper murmurs, her expression sincere.

Morgan tugs gently on Peter’s hand and he shuffles closer. Pepper slips her arm around Peter’s shoulders and Peter leans into her embrace, resting his head on her shoulder.

It’s peaceful and it’s nice, to sit here in the dappled sunlight on the emerald grass, with quiet chatter and the whistle of birds in the background, alone but together, Pepper’s arm around him and Morgan’s hand tightly in his.

Yet Peter can’t help but wish that Tony was here too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feedback on how I wrote Harley would be much appreciated - I've never actually written him before, so I was taking a step into new territory here.
> 
> As always, I appreciate you all so much, and as always, thank you for reading. ❤


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peter hasn't slept well for a while.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for your amazing response to this fic!! I'm so grateful for the kudos and the comments - it always makes me smile when I read them :)
> 
> Warnings in this chapter for nightmares and implied mild panic attacks. If you feel uncomfortable with these topics at all, just skip it. Stay safe everyone ❤

“There is no greater sorrow than to recall in misery the time when we were happy.” **– Dante Alighieri**

 

 

_"Mr Stark? I don't feel so good."_

_"...Please. I'm down here. I'm down here!"_

_"I don't wanna go…"_

_"We won, Mr Stark, we won…"_

_"I'm stuck, I'm stuck! I can't move. I can't…"_

_"Please, I don't wanna go…"_

_"I'm sorry, Tony…"_

Peter wakes with a choked cry, his heart pounding a million miles an hour, soaked in cold sweat with the blankets twisted around him. Still lost in the remnants of his nightmare, he panics, hyperventilating.

_No no no no no..._

"Peter?" The door to his room opens and May peers around it anxiously. "Peter?! What's wrong?!" She spots him and her expression creases with worry. "Oh, honey." She hurries over and wraps him in a hug. Peter leans into it, breathing in the familiar smell of her perfume.

"Bad dream?" May asks softly, and Peter nods, his face pressed against her shoulder.

"Oh, honey," she whispers again, rubbing a hand over his back. "It's okay, Peter. You're okay."

Peter sniffs, shaking his head _no._ "I'm not okay," he mumbles. "It's not okay. _Nothing_ is okay."

May pulls away and taps a finger under his chin, lifting his gaze to meet her own. "We can make it okay," she tells him.

Peter shakes his head again, tears on his face. "You don't get it. I can't stop - I can't stop thinking about it. I had to - I had to watch…" He doesn't finish the sentence.

"I know, honey," May soothes. "I know, darling. I get it. I…"

“You _don’t_ get it, May!” Peter bursts out, his anger and grief pouring from him, and he knows he is a mess and he knows he is shouting but he doesn’t care. “I was _there!_ I was there when he – when he…when he died.” His voice drops, tears running down his face. “I was there, and I couldn’t do anything to s-save him. I was crying and b-begging and pleading and all they did was p-pull me away from him. Do you know what that was like?!” His voice is raw and ragged, choked with grief. “Do you know what that was like, Aunt May? To watch him d-die in front of me? To watch the life fade from his eyes? To not be able to do a _single damn thing about it?!”_

His voice rises again, furious and agonized. “It’s _hell,_ Aunt May. It’s _hell._ No, I take that back. It’s _worse_ than hell. It’s _so much worse_ .” He swipes at his soaked cheeks, tears falling into his hands. “I can’t live without him. I need him. I need him _so bad,”_ he sobs.

If Peter looks up, he will see the tears on May’s face, her hands shaking almost as badly as his are.

But he doesn’t look up. He buries his head in his hands and he sobs, because he is scared, and he is upset and alone, and Tony is gone, and nothing is ever going to be right again.

 

 

_Peter is back on the battlefield, ash drifting in the wind around him like dark flakes of snow. He's completely alone. Eyes wide, he stumbles forward, picking his way around the rubble of the broken planet. "Hello?" he calls. "Is anyone there? Can anyone hear me?"_

_He turns around and suddenly the Avengers are in front of him, only metres away, clustered in a circle around something on the ground. Peter frowns and walks towards them. "Hello?" He taps Steve on the shoulder but the super soldier ignores him, solemn gaze fixed on whatever the group is huddled around. He doesn't bat an eyelid, even when Peter waves hand in front of his face._

_Peter feels like a ghost._

_He moves through the crowd. Everyone is equally unresponsive, even as he pushes past them, making his way to the centre of the circle._

_He stops dead when he reaches the middle._

_Tony lies motionless on the ground, burn marks from the gauntlet running up his right arm and across the right side of his face. His eyes are closed and his chest is still. Pepper is crying silently as she cradles his head in her lap._

_"Mr Stark?" Peter chokes out, dropping to his knees. "Mr Stark?!" He lays a shaking hand on Tony's chest plate. "No, no, please...Mr Stark…"_

_Tony’s eyes flash open. "Peter," he rasps. "Peter, you failed."_

_"I tried…" Peter stammers, eyes filled with tears._

_"You were supposed to save me," Tony accuses._

_"I'm sorry," Peter sobs. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry…"_

_"You should be." Tony’s voice is venomous. "It's all your fault. I'm_ dead _because of you."_

_"No!" Peter shakes his head violently. "No! It's not my fault! Please, I swear it wasn't my fault!"_

_"Stop lying," Tony snarls. "It's all your fault._ You _killed me."_

_"No!" Peter cries. "No!"_

_A strange feeling is beginning to creep over Peter's hand, and through tear-blurred eyes he glances down at where it rests on Tony's chestplate. His heart skips a beat._

_His hand was turning to dust._

_"No," Peter sobs, as the dust creeps up his arm. "No,_ please. _" He clutched at Tony with his good hand. "Save me, Mr Stark, please."_

_Tony’s expression is as cold as ice. "No."_

_"Please!" Peter begs, his chest beginning to dissolve into the wind. "Please!"_

_But as Peter turns to dust all over again, all he sees is Tony’s cold gaze. He hears the hiss of his voice in his ears:_

_"You killed me."_

Peter wakes with a gasp, his eyes flashing open into darkness. He stares up at the dark ceiling, taking deep, shuddering breaths to try and calm his racing heart. He hasn't woken May tonight, and his room is empty and silent, but the darkness feels constricting. He needs _space,_ he needs _air,_ he needs the unlimited emptiness of the night.

Peter flings the covers aside and crosses the room, the carpet cool beneath his bare feet. He eases the door open silently and lets it fall softly back into place behind him before padding down the hall. His window is locked, as are most on this floor, but he knows there's a faulty window on the floor below that he should be able to slip out of unnoticed.

Peter’s still not entirely familiar with the layout of the S.H.I.E.L.D. base, but he manages to find his way to the emergency stairwell - he doesn't want to take the lift; it will be too loud in the quiet of the night. He slips down the stairs, his soft footsteps sounding painfully loud in the empty stairwell.

He leaves the stairwell and walks down the hall. The sleeping quarters are all on the floor above, so Peter isn't pressed to be completely silent, but he still ghosts quietly down the hall. The window is still faulty, to Peter's relief: the lock is broken, and it only takes a bit of jiggling the window around in its frame before it opens. Peter glances behind him once before sliding out of the window.

A gentle night breeze hits him instantly, and he lets out a soft sigh. Clinging to the wall with the tips of his fingers and toes, he quietly scales the wall. The roof comes up quicker than he expects and he crawls onto it, barely feeling the chill of the concrete on his bare arms and feet.

There's an air conditioning unit near the edge of the roof and Peter leans his back against it, tucking his knees up to his chest and wrapping his arms around them. The night is peacefully still, a stark contrast to the constant traffic and dazzling lights of Queens. _If it's still like that,_ Peter thinks miserably. Five years have passed since he was last there - the Queens of today could be completely different to the Queens he used to know.

The floodlights illuminate the base entrance down below, the entrance bay eerily quiet. Crickets chirp faintly and in the distance a night bird calls. Moths flutter around the bulbs of the floodlights. Beyond the reach of the lights, the shadowy silhouettes of trees wave gently in the breeze.

Peter closes his eyes and lets go of a deep, shaky breath. He tries to clear his mind and focus on his breathing, but memories of his nightmare keep racing back.

_"It's all your fault."_

_"No!"_

_"You killed me."_

_"No, please!"_

Peter squeezes his eyelids shut tighter, willing the memories away.

_"Save me, Mr Stark,_ please _."_

_"No."_

Peter's eyes flash open and he gasps for breath, sucking in deep gulps of the cool night air. He leans his head back against the air conditioning unit with a _thunk._

"Hey, kiddo."

Peter blinks in surprise, flicking his gaze to the owner of the voice. Carol hovers at the edge of the rooftop, energy glowing around her hands and feet. As Peter watches, she touches down gracefully at the edge of the roof. "Mind if I join you?"

Peter gives a small shrug. Carol sits down a few feet away from him, mirroring his position, and stretches out her legs. She doesn't ask him why he's sitting alone on the roof in the middle of the night, or why there are tearstains on his cheeks. Maybe she understands a little of what he's going through.

They sit in silence, listening to the night and the quiet sound of each other’s breathing. Despite the fact that they're both just dressed in pajamas - Peter in the _'I Survived My Trip To NYC'_ shirt and Hello Kitty pants he's never had the heart to get rid of, Carol in a white singlet and black sweatpants with the S.H.I.E.L.D. logo on the leg - neither of them are bothered by the chill of the night air. For Peter, it's crisp and clean, and it slowly dries the tears on his face.

_"Ad astra per aspera,"_ Carol says eventually.

"What?" Peter shifts his head slightly to look at her.

"It's something my friend Mar-Vell used to say," Carol explains. " _Ad astra per aspera._ It means _'through hardships to the stars'_." She points at the stars speckled across the sky, tiny sparkles of light that flare and twinkle as they watch. "Some of those stars are millions of light years away. From here, it seems impossibly far, too far to even think about. You're not going to reach them in a single leap. Probably not in two, or three. You might not reach them in a hundred." The breeze tousles Carol's blonde hair. "But if you give up halfway just because it seems too far, you're never going to reach them at all. You'll never know what might have been out there."

Peter watches the stars glitter. "So," he says slowly, "Are you trying to say that I need to keep looking for the light? That I need to keep going, even though Mr Stark is gone? To look for the good in the future I've got?"

Carol smiles, her eyes glittering mysteriously. "I don't know. Am I?"

Peter huffs out a small laugh. He watches the trees sway in the wind and closes his eyes against the soft feeling of the breeze against his bare skin. "I can try," he whispers.

"The stars will always be there, Peter," Carol says softly. "You just have to be brave enough to find them."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!! Sorry it took a couple of days for me to post this.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peter spirals, school is strange, and Ned and MJ are the best.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for your amazing support, your kudos and your comments!! I am, as always, incredibly grateful. ❤
> 
> TW in this chapter for panic attacks - skip if you need. I promise the next chapter (which will probably be the last, unless I find any last-minute inspiration for another chapter) will be better.
> 
> So here's chapter 5, right on time for the Spider-Man: Far From Home release!!

There is one pain, I often feel, which you will never know. It’s caused by the absence of you. **–** **Ashleigh Brilliant**

 

 

Peter _really_ doesn’t want to go back to school.

He lies in bed, staring at the familiar ceiling of his apartment, listening to the Queens traffic build up in the streets three floors below him - it turns out Queens is pretty much the way he remembers it. He can hear May softly walking past his door on her way to the kitchen. Her footsteps are quiet – she’s trying not to wake him. There’s still five minutes until his alarm goes off.

He guesses he’s sort of glad to be going back, to have some sort of distraction from reality. It’s hard not to think about _him_ when he’s home or at the compound, and the subtle reminders of him are almost too familiar to bear.

The holoscreens in Tony’s lab at the Starks' house, blueprints and calculations and inverted mobius strips still displayed on them, like Tony only left the room moments ago.

The framed picture on the table next to Peter’s bed of the two of them at Peter’s ‘Stark internship’ ceremony, Peter grinning like an idiot with his arm around Tony, both of them with their fingers tweaked into bunny ears behind the other’s head.

The sweatshirt Peter accidentally wore home one night after an afternoon at the compound, after Tony had chucked it at him with a laugh when Peter had complained that the workshop was too cold.

The reminders are small, but they are _there_ , and they _hurt._ Tony had become such a huge part of Peter’s life that now he’s gone, Peter feels incomplete. Half of a whole. Part of him is missing and he can’t get it back, not ever, because Tony’s not just missing he’s _dead_ , and even after a month without him Peter’s heart plummets every time he doesn’t walk through the door.

It even hurt to leave the S.H.I.E.L.D. base where he’d been staying, to leave behind the other Avengers. They’re part of his family now, and after three weeks of staying with them at the compound, he’s become even closer to them. He already misses Rhodey’s quiet company; Sam and Bucky’s gentle teasing, one of the only things that managed to bring a smile to his face; and Carol’s steady presence. He’s only been back home in Queens for a week, but he misses them a lot. His apartment is familiar and comforting, but it’s too quiet for his liking, and in the silence his thoughts are too loud.

But Peter thinks he might be able to handle school. Ned will be there, and MJ; he hasn’t seen them at all since he came back. He’s texted them a few times, all three cautiously tiptoeing around having to talk about the last five years – and the last month in particular – but Peter’s managed to surmise that they were both dusted like he was. His first - and only - phone call to Ned ended with both of them almost in tears after Ned asked how Peter was holding up.

There’s a soft tap at his door. “Peter?” May calls softly. “Are you up yet?”

For a moment, Peter considers telling her how he feels. How much he’s _dreading_ walking into school this morning. How much he’s dreading just getting in the car and driving through the city, how much he’s dreading seeing reminders of everything he’s lost, how much he’s dreading having to scrape together his shattered soul and pretend he’s not as broken as he really is.

May will understand. May will let him stay home another day.

And yet if he does, May will also have to call her boss and explain. May will miss another day of work and another day of pay. His aunt will inch just the slightest bit closer to losing her job to one of the millions of people who have reappeared just like he has, all struggling to catch up in a world that’s left them behind.

Peter can’t – _won’t_ – do that to her.

“Yeah, I’m up,” he answers finally.

He wanders out into the kitchen a few minutes later. May’s making herself a cup of coffee, and as Peter sits down at the table he watches the steam rise in misty spirals towards the ceiling, dissipating into the air almost as quickly as they come.

May turns around, cradling her cup in her hands, and gives him a small smile. “Good morning.”

Peter attempts to smile back. “Hey.”

May regards him with concern in her eyes. “You still up for school? You don’t have to if you don’t feel like it, Peter. I don’t want you going if you don’t feel ready.”

“I’m okay,” Peter says, berating himself internally for answering so quickly. “I’ll be fine.”

“Don’t just say it because you know it’s what I want to hear,” May warns, but there’s no fire in her voice, only concern. “If you…”

“May, I’m fine,” Peter breaks in. “I’m okay, honestly. I can do this.”

_I can’t do this._

_I can’t do this._

_I can’t do this._

He shoves the thoughts away and forces a smile, but he can’t help a rush of guilt at the flash of relief in May’s eyes. “Okay,” she says, walking over to him. She sets her coffee cup down on the table and sits next to him, then puts both hands on his shoulders so that he’s looking into her eyes, filled with love and worry. “Okay, Peter,” she repeats. “But you promise me, Peter Benjamin Parker, that if anything happens, if you don’t feel up to it, _promise_ me you will call me straight away. I don’t care what the teachers tell you. Call me, okay?”

“Okay,” Peter agrees. “I promise, May.”

“Come here,” May says after a beat, leaning forward. Peter leans into her hug gratefully, wrapping his hands around her back, listening to her breathing, keeping his breathing in time with hers.

“I love you,” May says quietly.

Peter rests his head against May’s. “I love you too,” he whispers.

Half an hour later, he’s standing outside Midtown School of Science and Technology for the first time in five years.

Peter swallows hard. He can feel his heart thundering in his chest and hear the blood rushing in his ears. He doesn’t want to move.

But somehow, he does. He moves almost mechanically towards the entrance, ignoring the people brushing past him. He feels like a ghost: insubstantial, invisible, barely there. A fragmented version of his former self, the Peter who used to skip into school every morning, who used geek out with Ned in the science labs, who used to laugh as MJ rolled her eyes at him across the cafeteria table.

Peter’s not sure he’ll ever be that version of himself again.

He walks into the main hall and stops. People move around him like he’s not there: he’s the rock in the current, the one still spot in a tide of motion, the one point of silence in a room full of noise.

Peter catches the end of a conversation, hears a name that makes him slow, makes his pulse race, makes his breath catch sharply.

_“Iron Man’s dead…it was in the news on TV…”_

Peter seriously considers turning around and walking right back out the door.

_I can’t do this._

_I can’t do this._

_I can’t do this._

**_You can,_ ** a voice echoes in his mind, and Peter almost stumbles, because the memory of Mr Stark’s voice is fond and familiar, and _God_ he misses it so, so much.

_Mr Stark would want me to do this._

He lifts his head, and as he does, his eyes fall on someone he knows.

Peter’s feet find the strength to move again and his heart lightens just a fraction. He walks across the hall, pushing past students, some of whom he recognises and others he’s never seen before, making a beeline straight for his best friend.

“Ned,” he tries to say, but his mouth can barely form the words. He clears his throat, tries again, continues to shove through the crowd towards him. “Ned.”

Ned turns, and Peter watches as his expression turns from neutral to stunned. “Peter!” he breathes, and automatically, a habit born out of months of practice, the two perform their handshake. Peter can feel Ned’s hands shaking, see just how overcome with emotion Ned is.

And then Peter is hugging his best friend for the first time in five years.

“Oh my God, Peter,” he can hear Ned whispering over his shoulder. “Oh my God.”

Peter briefly closes his eyes, burying his face in Ned’s shoulder. For a moment, he tries to pretend everything is back to the way it was before Thanos; tries to pretend everything is _normal,_ everything is _good._

The illusion is broken when Ned pulls away. He stares at Peter with wide eyes, looking overwhelmed. There are tears on his face, glittering trails down his cheeks. “Peter…dude, I…” He looks lost for words.

Peter watches Ned’s eyes rove over him, taking in his clothes, his face, his red-rimmed eyes. He knows just how bad he looks. He knows just how bleak his eyes are; he’s stared back at his own pale face in the mirror, seen the sorrow that now permanently haunts his features. What Peter doesn’t expect is to see his sadness reflected in Ned’s face – maybe Ned isn’t as deeply scarred by Tony’s death as Peter is, but he’s still been affected. Everyone has; if not by Tony or Nat’s deaths, then by their own experiences in the aftermath of the snap.

“Peter…” Ned tries again. “I’m so sorry.”

Peter swallows the lump in his throat. “So am I,” he whispers.

“Sup, loser,” someone behind him says quietly.

Peter spins around. “MJ,” he whispers, and then pulls her into a hug. To his surprise, she doesn’t resist. Instead, she returns it, her slim arms around his shoulders, her curly brown hair pressed against his face.

She pulls away quicker than Ned did, and Peter sees the grief on her face before she half-heartedly composes her expression. “How’re you holding up?” she asks, as quick as always to sense his mood.

Peter gives a tiny shrug. He doesn’t know how to put it into words, but luckily MJ doesn’t seem to need him to. She twitches the corner of her mouth up in sympathy. Her voice drops, until it can only be heard by the two of them. “If you need to talk, just tell me, okay? I know you have my number. You know I’m always here. Just let me know, okay? Don’t try and pretend you can make it through this on your own.”

Peter blinks away the tears in his eyes. “Thanks, MJ,” he whispers.

MJ gives him a tiny smile. “Dork,” she teases.

The bell rings and people around them start to move off towards their classes, but Peter barely registers it. It all feels so surreal.

He had been _gone._

For _five years._

MJ must see how his eyes suddenly go distant, because she reaches for his hand and gently squeezes it. “Stay with us, yeah?” she says softly. “We can do this.”

Ned catches hold of his other hand. “You got this, Peter. _We_ got this,” he says. His voice is firm, just like Peter remembers.

Peter squeezes both of their hands in return. “I know,” he says quietly.

They walk to class together, and none of them let go of the other’s hands the entire way.

 

Class is _strange._ And not like Doctor Strange _strange_ , just _strange._

Peter doesn’t recognise half of the kids in his class anymore, which is slightly unsettling. What’s even more unsettling is that he _does_ recognise one of the new kids - she lives three floors down from him, and when he was fifteen she was _ten._ Now she’s the same age as him and she’s in his english class.

There’s an oddly tense atmosphere in the room, and everyone’s pretty quiet. The teacher - Peter doesn’t recognise him, either - tries to lighten the mood, but in the end he gives up and sits at his desk, telling them to do whatever they want.

Peter huddles inside his jacket and tries to make himself as small as possible. MJ’s sketching something in the margins of Peter’s notebook and Ned has yet to let go of his hand.

They talk a little bit. Not about the Snap, or Tony’s death, but about normal stuff. What they had for breakfast, as boring as the topic is; what they’re going to do on the weekend; when they should meet up for a sleepover (“As soon as possible,” MJ insists firmly, leaving no room for argument. “I’m pretty sure what we all need right now is to just crash in Ned’s room, eat as much candy as is humanly possible, and watch Disney movies until we’re sick of singalongs.”). It feels nice to talk about ordinary things like this. Peter can almost pretend things are back to normal.

So things are fine, sort of. In a new and uncertain kind of way, things are fine.

Until they’re not. They’re really, _really_ not.

“I don’t want to go! Oh, come on, dude!  I don’t want to go.”

The context is entirely different, the person speaking sounds nothing like him - they’re waiting in the cafeteria line in front of Peter, and one of their friends is laughing as they try to pull them out of line to where a group of other kids are standing. But the words are like keys to the deepest, darkest corners of his mind, and as he stands there frozen, the memories are unlocked, and suddenly he’s back on Titan again.

_“I don’t want to go, Mr Stark…please, I don’t…I don’t want…I don’t want to go. Please, please.”_

_Eyes glittering with tears. Staring desperately up at Tony’s horrified face. Clinging to him like his life depended upon it, because it did._

Peter is lost. Stranded in his own memories, drowning in panic, his hands shaking, his mind uncomprehending. He is back on Titan again and reliving the nightmare that is his own death.

_“I don’t wanna go. Please, Mr Stark. I don’t wanna go.”_

_Voice choked with fear. Face pale with terror. Feeling himself dissolve into the wind, feeling his life ebbing away from him as he turned to dust in Tony’s arms._

Peter can barely breathe, but somehow he manages not to completely break down in the middle of the cafeteria. He stumbles, letting his feet lead him to the boys toilets, where he barely makes it into a cubicle before he drops to the floor, his breathing coming in quick pants.

_No, no, please no._

_Save me, Mr Stark._

_Please._

_I don’t wanna go I don’t wanna go I don’t wanna go_

_Somebody help me, please._

He doesn’t realise he’s whispering the words aloud until he feels his lips mouthing the words, distantly hears his voice mumbling and pleading. He’s crying, too, tears pouring down his face, ugly and ungraceful. He can’t stop, he can’t breathe, he can’t think. He’s trapped in his mind, and it’s cold and dark and he can’t find the light.

_The light._

_Mr Stark._

_I need Mr Stark._

He fumbles for his phone, scrabbles at his pocket with shaking hands. His phone is in his hand and he’s turned on the screen when he remembers.

_Mr Stark is dead._

Peter stares at the lock screen, at the selfie of him and Tony set as the wallpaper – one of his favourite photos, where they both look so happy, so carefree and excited with life.

_Mr Stark is dead._

He claps a hand over his mouth to muffle his sobs. Tears soak into the sleeve of his jacket. He’s shaking uncontrollably, his breath hitching and his vision blurred with tears.

He distantly hears the bell ringing to signal the end of lunch and the start of class. He faintly hears a clamour of voices as students move off to class. The toilets, mercifully, stay empty (but is it merciful? As much as Peter doesn’t want to be found like this, broken and tear-stained, he doesn’t know how much longer he can take being alone).

Peter doesn’t know how he can still be crying, but he is. All he can do is stare at the blurred phone screen, at Tony’s familiar smirk, at the joy on his own face in the photo, and sob. One thought whirls around and around in his head, cruel and merciless, like a record on repeat.

_Mr Stark is dead Mr Stark is dead Mr Stark is dead he’sdeadhe’sdeadandIcouldn’tsavehim..._

A noise filters slowly into his hearing: two pairs of hurried footsteps, heading towards him. They burst into the toilets and with them comes a voice - _Ned_ \- frantic and worried: “Peter?! Peter?!”

Peter can’t respond. He stares at his shaking hands.

“Peter? Pe - MJ, what the heck? This is the _boy’s toilets._ Pretty sure you’re not allowed in here.”

“Do I look like I friggin’ care? Peter? Are you in here?” MJ’s voice calls, and she sounds both determined and worried at the same time.

Peter tries to pull himself out of his memories, but broken metal and orange-brown dust is filling his mind again. “N-Ned,” he manages to mumble. “MJ.”

Peter hears Ned sit down on the other side of the cubicle door, his back to Peter’s so he’s leaning against the door. “We’re here, okay?” Ned says softly. “We’re here.”

“T-talk,” Peter manages to whisper. “Please, j-just talk.”

“Okay.” There’s a pause as Ned thinks for a moment. “Uh, well, while you were at the cafeteria, I was talking to MJ, and apparently they’ve revised the entire school curriculum while we were gone, did you...you know what? Never mind. That was a bad topic. Who cares about the school curriculum, anyway? Besides MJ, I mean. I swear she’s memorised the entire thing just so she can call out the teacher if they go off-topic.”

“That’s exactly why I memorised it,” MJ says, and she sounds slightly smug.

“And you know the sleepover thing we were talking about earlier?” Ned goes on. “MJ and I were discussing what type of candy we should bring, and MJ said we should get those massive packs of Hersheys but I said we should get gummy bears, and we both agreed that you’d probably want both, so I think we’re going with both. Plus we always get Skittles, and I also think we should get M&Ms, but not the peanut ones ‘cause last time we bought those you ate so many, you almost threw up and that was _not_ fun.”

Peter can’t help a choked laugh at that. “I remember that.” It’s easier to breathe now and his tears aren’t coming as quickly as they were before.

“I take partial blame for that,” MJ drawls. “But honestly, I didn’t think you were _actually_ going to chug the packet, dork.”

He leans his head back against the cubicle door and focuses on breathing, Ned rattling on in the background and MJ putting in the occasional sarcastic comment. When he’s finally found some state of calm, Peter wipes the tears from his face with the sleeve of his jacket and stands. When he opens the cubicle door, Ned and MJ are waiting for him, and Ned instantly envelops him in a hug. Peter wraps his arms around Ned tightly, his face buried in Ned’s shoulder, and all he can think of as MJ reluctantly joins the group hug  is _I am so, so lucky I have my friends._

They eventually move from the bathroom to the floor of the corridor outside, but they don’t go back to class for the rest of the afternoon. The teachers don’t seem to mind, and give them some space every time they walk past, especially after MJ snapped at one who tried to get them to move. Peter makes a note to never cross MJ when she’s angry - she is _terrifying._

But she’s also understanding, and stubborn, and loyal, and Peter has never been more grateful for her and for Ned than now, as they sit shoulder-to-shoulder in the deserted school corridor and have a discussion that becomes more and more animated as the afternoon wears on, regarding exactly how many Star Wars movies Peter and Ned think they can binge at the sleepover before MJ gets sick of them humming the _Imperial March_ and throws Ned’s R2-D2 action figure at the TV.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading ❤
> 
> Also, if you've seen Far From Home, no spoilers pls :)


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s been two months since Tony died when Pepper invites them down to the lake house.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! I'm really sorry this chapter has been so long in coming - I decided to write another chapter and had some vague ideas, but couldn't really work out where to take them. However, thanks to the awesome Bbblaney77, who have me some absolutely INCREDIBLE ideas, I was able to write this chapter.
> 
> Thank you so much to everyone who reads this! I'm truly grateful.
> 
> Bblaney77 - I hope this chapter was what you were looking for. :)
> 
> For everyone - enjoy!

“People keep telling me that life goes on, but to me that’s the saddest part.” **– Unknown**

  


It’s been two months since Tony died when Pepper invites them down to the lake house.

She'd promised to, a month-and-a-half ago, on the day Peter and May had left the S.H.I.E.L.D. facility to return home to Queens. "Come and visit us, alright?" she'd said, pulling May into an embrace - the two had become firm friends over the three weeks spent at the S.H.I.E.L.D. base. "We're down in...well, you know where we are. Once you've...settled back in, come and visit us. We'd love to have you." Pepper had smiled at Peter then. "Morgan would love to see you again, I'm sure."

Peter had smiled weakly, but his smile hadn't quite reached his eyes. It had been one of _those_ days, and it hadn't helped that they were leaving the base and the safety Peter had come to associate with it behind. It also didn’t help that that was the day he had had to say goodbye to the rest of the Avengers.

They'd all gone their separate ways: Peter and May had gone back to Queens; Pepper and Morgan had slipped into a car to travel back to the lake house; Steve had disappeared into time to return the Infinity Stones; Carol had blasted off back towards the stars; and Clint and Scott had returned to their families, reunited after five years away.

Now Peter’s sitting in the back of May’s car as it rattles down the long driveway to the Starks’ house.

The trees around them give way to the large expanse of grass that surrounds the lake house, and Peter looks out the window to where the lake is shining in the sun. There never seems to be an imperfect day in this part of the state; every time he’s been here it always looks like something out of a movie, and he’s constantly amazed by the fact that Tony built the picturesque log cabin himself.

As May pulls up beside the house, the door is flung open and Morgan comes rushing out, beaming. She stands on the top step of the porch and waves enthusiastically. “Hi!” she shouts happily as Peter steps out of the car.

Peter musters as wide a smile as he can - the house has brought back a tinge of sadness that he can’t quite seem to quell. “Hey, Morgan!” he calls as he starts towards the porch, May behind him.

Morgan wraps her arms around his waist as soon as he reaches her. “Hi!” she says into his shirt, her voice muffled by the fabric. Peter ruffles the top of her head with one hand and hugs her with the other, smiling genuinely this time. “You’ve gotten bigger since the last time I saw you,” he continues, his smile growing when she grins up at him.

“So have you,” Pepper says, stepping out onto the porch. She and May embrace like old friends, as though they hadn’t met only two months ago. Pepper looks as beautiful as ever, her strawberry-blonde hair falling softly onto the shoulders of the casual white blouse she’s wearing. She smells of lilies when she hugs Peter, and he smiles faintly. He never really knew her that well before Tony died, but as soon as she properly met him she’d acted as though she was his mom, fussing over him and Morgan while she made them meals or checking in on him on his most lonely nights at the S.H.I.E.L.D. base.

“Come on in,” Pepper invites. “We’re so happy to have you here. Morgan hasn’t settled down the entire morning!” She smiles at her daughter. “I hope you’re all ready, because Morgan’s been planning the whole week, and last time she showed me her schedule it was pretty packed.”

“Yup,” Morgan agrees. “We’re gonna have so much fun. We can go swimming, and rowing, and even fishing, and we can go for walks around the lake and look for birds, and -”

“It sounds awesome,” Peter laughs, breaking in before she can turn red in the face from oxygen deprivation. “I can’t wait.”

Morgan beams at him. “C’mon, let’s go, let’s go! Hurry up and come inside so we can start playing already!” She grabs Peter’s hand and drags him toward the door.

“At least let Peter drop his bags in his room!” Pepper calls, but Morgan either doesn’t hear or doesn’t care and forges ahead towards the living room.

Morgan gives him and May the grand tour of the house, pointing out particular aspects - “That’s the kitchen, that’s the dining table, that’s the freezer (there’s Juice Pops in there), that’s the couch…” - before stopping in front of two doors in what Pepper dubs the ‘guest wing’ of the house. “That’s your room,” Morgan says to Peter, pointing at the nearest door, “And that’s your room, Aunt May.”(She accidentally called May “Aunt” at the funeral, and when May said it was perfectly fine to call her that, she decided she wouldn’t stop.)

“Thanks, Morgan,” Peter says, ruffling her hair. She grins at him widely.

“How about we let Peter and Aunt May unpack and settle in?” Pepper suggests to Morgan. “You can help me make lunch for them while we wait for them to get ready, and then we can take our lunch outside and sit on the jetty to eat.”

“Okay!” Morgan chirps, and skips off towards the kitchen, leaving May and Peter to themselves.

May disappears into her room, which is a little further down the hallway from Peter’s, the two rooms separated by a large bathroom. Peter grabs hold of his suitcase in one hand and opens the door to his room with the other.

He’s expecting a plain guest bedroom, the sort that most people have which functions for whomever is staying over - comfortable and unpersonalized.

What he isn’t expecting is to walk into a bedroom that is undeniably _made for him._

It has the same timber floors as the rest of the house, and a large window on one wall that overlooks the woodland that hugs one side of the house. The walls are painted a pale dove gray, trimmed with white, and the bedspread on the queen-sized bed is navy blue, soft and inviting. There’s a wide desk up against one wall with drawers on either side and shelves stacked with books above it. On the desk is a lamp shaped like an Imperial Stormtrooper and a neat row of empty glass bottles, each labelled in Tony’s scratchy writing: _Spare Web Fluid._ And, of course, there’s a Spider-Man poster over the head of his bed, and a tiny Iron Man figurine on his bedside table.

Peter feels weak at the knees. He drops his suitcase next to the built-in wardrobe, sinks onto the bed and stares around the room, realising after a while that his mouth has been open in stunned amazement for a whole minute. He pulls one drawer open with a shaky hand - it’s filled with all his favourite movies: the entire _Star Wars_ collection, _Aliens,_ every old movie he’s ever mentioned to Tony is sitting in the drawer in front of him, pristine and new, ready to be watched on the flat screen TV on another wall. A second drawer is filled to the brim with tools: spanners, wrenches, a brand-new soldering iron, pliers…

Tony did all this for _him_.

For Peter Benjamin Parker, the kid from Queens.

“Peter?” Pepper hovers in the doorway. She smiles at him when he looks up, not seeming to notice how quickly his eyes are reddening with tears. “Do you like it?” she asks quietly.

“Do I like it?” Peter croaks out, blinking back tears. “I…” He glances around the room, unable to speak. “I can’t believe he did all this for me,” he whispers.

Pepper crosses the room and sits down beside him. “He loved you so much, you know,” she says. “I have to say, I was more than a little confused when he came to me raving about you after you took down that Vulture guy - what was his name? - Toomes. I’d never seen him so excited about a teenager before. I’d never seen him show that much interest in kids at all, besides from one kid up in Tennessee when he went missing in 2013.”

“Tony wasn’t really a kid-friendly kind of guy,” Pepper goes on. “At least, I didn’t think he was, at first. But he was fascinated by the way you looked up to him; he once told me that he never understood why you still admired him even though you’d seen all of his flaws.”

“How could I not?” Peter says shakily. “Tony was the best of us.”

“He was,” Pepper agrees. “He never knew it, but he was.”

Peter rubs the heels of his palms into his eyes to wipe away the tears beading there. Pepper touches his shoulder gently. “Hey,” she says quietly. “You alright?”

“It’s just…” Peter scrubs at the tears that make it down his cheeks. “It’s hard now, you know? I’m used to being the little guy, but now Tony’s gone and suddenly everyone is expecting me to step up and take his place. And I know it sounds selfish, but I _can’t._ I can’t live up to Tony. I’m just your friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man. I’m just a kid.”

“You’re _Tony’s_ kid _,”_ Pepper says, and her expression is so firm and honest that Peter has to look away. He glances down at his hands, unable to speak as tears well in his eyes and choke in his throat.

“You know, if I hadn’t known you were always like this, I would have thought you were Tony reincarnated,” Pepper says. “I see a little more of him in you every day. The genius. The instinct for technology. The need to fix things. The guilt over things that aren’t your fault. The self-sacrificial nature. The stubbornness. The bravery. The loyalty.” The softness in Pepper’s tone drags Peter’s eyes back to hers, and she smiles gently at him. “Tony was so proud of you.”

“But how am I supposed to live up to him?” Peter whispers. “Everyone’s expecting me to be the next Iron Man. Nobody asks me whether I _want_ to be. Nobody realises that there won’t _be_ another Iron Man.”

“No, there won’t,” Pepper agrees. “There’ll never be anyone like Tony. And there’ll never be another Iron Man in the way Tony was Iron Man. But you don’t need to be the next Iron Man, Peter - you don’t need to live up to Tony’s legacy. No one can. Tony wouldn’t want you to be exactly like him. Tony would want you to be like _you.”_ She brushes a tear off his face with a gentle hand. “He wasn’t proud of you because you were exactly like him. He loved you because yes, he saw some of himself in you, the good parts of him, but he also loved you because you were so _different_ from him _._ You were _you._ You saved cats from trees, and gave old ladies directions, and left Happy voicemails even though you knew he never listened. You made jokes while you fought, watched old movies, brought a smile to everyone you met. You stuck to walls, shot webs from your wrist, and brought out the best in the people around you. _That’s_ why Tony loved you.”

Peter stifles a sob by biting his lip. “I guess.”

“Well, I don’t guess, I _know,”_ Pepper says firmly. She puts one arm around him, pulling him close. Peter breathes in the scent of lilies. “And you know what else I know?” she adds, her tone amused. “I know that unless we get back out there soon, Morgan’s going to have blown up half the kitchen trying to make sandwiches.”

Peter laughs and wipes his sleeve over his eyes. “We should probably make sure that doesn’t happen.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Pepper laughs, standing up and holding out her hand to help Peter up too. When he accepts it, she pulls him into a hug. “You’ve always got a family here, okay?” she says. “Me, and May, and Morgan. We all love you so much.”

“I know,” Peter mumbles, his face buried in Pepper’s strawberry-blonde hair. “I love you, too.”

  


Lunch is a fun affair. Morgan’s ham sandwiches, fortunately, didn’t result in the destruction of the kitchen and are actually quite good to have been made by a four-year-old with sub-par cooking skills. Pepper packs them into a basket, along with a bottle of lemonade (Morgan’s not allowed Coke yet) and homemade chocolate brownies, and they take them outside to the jetty. Peter and Morgan sit right at the very end of the wooden jetty and take turns breaking the crust off their sandwiches and throwing them into the water to ‘feed the fish’, as Morgan insists.

After lunch, Morgan drags Peter back inside and the two spend the entire afternoon turning the Starks’ living room into the biggest pillow fort Peter has ever seen. Morgan sources their materials from everywhere: the couch props up one end of the fort, stripped of its cushions (which serve as another wall); pillows from Morgan and Pepper’s bedrooms are stacked on top of each other to prop up yet another side of the fort; and blankets from various places (mainly the linen cupboard and Morgan’s bed) form the roof of the fort, held together by clothes pegs. Looking at it from the outside, the living room is a sea of blankets and pillows; but from the inside, it’s a whole other world.

“Come on!” Morgan squeals when they finally finish building it, lifting up the trailing blanket end that serves as the ‘door’ to their pillow fort and climbing inside. Peter follows her, wriggling through the entrance. It’s surprisingly spacious inside by pillow fort standards – not enough room for Peter to comfortably crawl on all fours, like Morgan does, but enough so that he can follow Morgan through it without knocking everything over. Pepper and May could probably fit inside too, if they wanted to, but judging by the laughter and conversation coming from the porch where the two women are sitting, Peter reasons they’re probably content where they are.

Morgan’s stashed more pillows and blankets inside the fort, along with the biggest collection of Avengers soft toys Peter’s ever seen. Morgan rolls onto her back, hugging the Black Widow, Hulk, Hawkeye, Thor, Iron Man and Captain America dolls to her chest – Peter doesn’t quite know how she fits them all in her arms at the same time – and stares up at the ceiling. Peter joins her on his back, and they lie next to each other in the comfortable quiet of the pillow fort, Dora the Explorer staring back at them from one of Morgan’s blankets.

Peter closes his eyes, listening to Morgan’s quiet breathing and the muffled conversation from outside. He could listen to what they were saying, if he wanted, but he chooses to zone out instead. The peacefulness of the pillow fort is almost putting him to sleep.

“Can I see your web shooters?” Morgan asks quietly. 

The question makes Peter nearly jump out of his skin. His eyes flash open and he whips his head around to stare at her. “W-what?”

Morgan turns her head to face him. “Your web shooters. You know…” She makes a _thwip_ sound with her mouth and holds up one hand, with her thumb, pointer and pinky fingers outstretched, her ring and middle fingers folded down.

“I…” Peter’s lost for words. “You know?”

Morgan tilts her head. “That you’re a superhero? Yup. Daddy used to tell me stories about you.”

“He - he what?” Peter can hardly breathe. “He told you stories...about me?”

“Uh-huh,” Morgan says, hugging the stuffed toys closer to her chest. “He told me about how you made your costume, and then he made one for you, too. And about how you stopped the Vulture-man, and how you tried to fix the ferry. He told me lots of stories about you. And he has lots of pictures of you, too. There’s one in the kitchen, and there’s one in the garage, next to his workbench. He always got sad about you when he looked at the pictures, especially when he was working on your special project.”

Peter’s heart skips a beat. “My...my what?”

“Your special project. He made it for you.” Morgan’s expression turns serious. “But I can’t tell you what it is. I promised Daddy to keep it a secret until it was ready for you.”

Tony had made something. For him. 

Tony had told his daughter stories about him.

Tony had kept his picture in his kitchen and his garage.

Peter can’t quite believe it.

“So, come on,” Morgan says, switching back to her previous topic of conversation. “Can I see your web shooters?”

“Sure.” Peter tugs back his sleeve. He always wears them nowadays, out of habit. Just in case something crops up and he needs Spider-Man more than he needs Peter Parker. Plus, they’re a comforting, familiar weight around his wrists, and they’re slim enough that they can go undetected beneath his clothes, so he can wear them anywhere.

“Woah.” Morgan’s eyes light up, and she reaches out a hand to touch them tentatively. “Can you shoot a web?”

“Now?” Peter asks dubiously.

“Yeah!”

“We should probably save the web-slinging for outside,” Peter says regretfully, hating the way Morgan’s face falls. “But hey, why don’t we grab your Nerf guns and declare war on your mom and Aunt May? I bet they won’t stand a chance against the might of our pillow fort.”

Morgan’s expression brightens gleefully. “Okay!” She carefully places her Avengers stuffed toys down and wriggles her way out of the pillow fort. “PILLOW FORT WAR!” Peter hears her yell, before the slap of her bare feet on the floorboards thunders up the stairs.

The four of them spend the rest of the afternoon locked in Nerf combat. Pepper is surprisingly fine with kids using her furniture as barricades, and doesn’t even bat an eyelash when Peter vaults over the back of the couch to get within range of shooting her. In fact, Pepper’s one of the best of them there (she puts it down to afternoons spent playing against Tony and Morgan, whose team-up was apparently lethal as far as Nerf combat goes), and Peter finds himself barely dodging around her foam bullets multiple times. May’s surprisingly handy with a Nerf gun too, and although Peter and Morgan have the advantage of the pillow fort, May and Pepper are more than a match for them.

The match goes so late into the evening, they end up playing in the dark, only stopping when Peter trips and narrowly misses the coffee table. They eat dinner on the couch while they watch _Lilo and Stitch_ \- a movie request both Morgan and Peter agreed firmly on. When Peter finally falls asleep that night, in the room Tony made for him, he feels happier than he has for a while. 

He feels like he's home.

  


The next morning, Morgan and Peter make pancakes for everyone, mixing up the batter from scratch and taking turns to see who can make the biggest pancake. Morgan wins, with her ridiculously-sized pancake that takes up the entirety of their pan and uses so much of the remaining batter they have to mix up more.

Breakfast in the Stark household is pretty crazy that morning: Morgan's super-sized pancake becomes drowned in maple syrup, May knocks her mug over and spills coffee all over the table cloth, and Peter's quick reflexes are the only thing that saves him when he accidentally elbows his plate off the edge of the table. 

They're halfway through breakfast when there's a knock at the front door. Pepper frowns. “I wonder who that could be?”

Peter glances out the front window, checking for a car, but there is none.

“I’ll get it!” Morgan runs to the door and stretches up to reach the handle, pulling the door open. She gives an excited gasp when she spots who is outside, and there's a squeal as she flings herself at whoever is standing outside. “Aunt Carol!”

Carol Danvers laughs, stooping down to wrap her arms around Morgan. “Hey, Morgan.” She looks Morgan up and down, smiling. “Have you grown? I swear you weren’t this tall last time I saw you.”

Morgan puffs out her chest proudly. “Yup. Mommy says I grew almost half an inch already!”

When Carol looks impressed, Morgan beams. “Come on, come on!” she says excitedly, grabbing Carol’s hand. “Come and see who else is here!”

Carol lets herself be dragged inside by Morgan, who’s beaming widely. “Hey!” she greets, smiling at everyone. “Sorry if I’m intruding. They wanted me up at the new Avengers facility and I thought I’d stop in on my way back to space.”

“You’re not intruding at all,” Pepper insists, leaving her seat to embrace Carol. “Come on in, you’re most welcome. Peter and May are here too - they’ve been down staying with us for a few days. You remember them?”

“Of course.” Carol gives Peter a warm smile. “Hey, Peter Parker.”

“Hey!” Peter jumps up from his place on the lounge to hug her. He’s missed her steady presence these past few months. When he lets go of her, she grins at him, exactly the way he remembers her: the cropped blonde hair, the quirk of her eyebrows when she smiles, the strong set of her shoulders.

“Hi, I’m Carol Danvers,” Carol introduces herself to May. “I think we met briefly - when you first came to the S.H.I.E.L.D. base to see Peter…”

“May Parker,” May replies, shaking her hand with an easy smile on her face. “I think we briefly saw each other at the funeral too - neither occasion was really a great time for introductions.”

“You’ve got that right,” Carol agrees with a smile, and Peter is so proud of just how well his aunt has adjusted to her now superhero-filled life (as well as slightly terrified because she’s proving herself to be just as badass as these superpowered women, which honestly isn’t that unexpected but still frightening because now May has backup in the _Protect Peter Parker At All Costs_ department).

“Come and sit down,” Pepper invites. “I think we’ve got enough pancakes left - that is, if Morgan and Peter haven’t eaten them all. They’re pancake-eating machines, I swear!”

Carol laughs as she takes a seat on one end of the couch. Morgan runs over and jumps onto her lap straight away, maple syrup smeared around her mouth. After they’ve discussed all the usual topics - how they’re going, how the other Avengers have been going - and they've all finished eating, Peter shuffles to the edge of his seat and asks earnestly, “So, where have you been? What have you been doing?”

“Yeah!” Morgan agrees. “Story, story!”

“Where do I even start?” Carol says, bouncing Morgan on one knee and smiling when the four-year-old giggles. “Things have been pretty chaotic since everyone came back. The Skrulls and I have been doing our best to try and set some planets back on their feet. Not everyone is as lucky as Earth is to have the Avengers.”

“What planets did you go to?” Morgan’s eyes are wide. “What did they look like? Do the people look like us? Did you go to Xandar? Did you go to Hala? Did you go anywhere else?"

“You’ve got a good memory,” Carol praises. “No, we didn’t go to Hala. Talos and I both agreed it was probably better to let the Kree right themselves; they can get very touchy when it comes to accepting help from outsiders. We did stop in at Xandar, however. The Nova Corps are getting the planet back in order. It’s going to take a long time and a lot of work, but they’re a lot further along than most planets are, and they’re in good hands.”

“What’s it like there?” Morgan’s eyes are wide.

Carol laughs. “I told you all about it last time, little one.”

“I know. But I like the way you tell it to me.” Morgan blinks round brown eyes up at Carol. “And Peter and Aunt May haven’t heard it yet, so you can tell it for them.”

“Alright,” Carol relents, although she doesn’t sound at all displeased. “Well, before Thanos came and things went wrong, it was a huge city, overflowing with people from every corner of the universe, an explosion of buildings and life. There were towers that stretched their roofs towards the sky, and parks everywhere, filled with lime-coloured grass and bushes with leaves like emeralds, and trees with spindly branches the colour of rubies and fire.”

Peter leans in closer, entranced, aware of Morgan on Carol’s lap staring up at the blonde warrior with starry eyes. May seems just as interested, and Pepper looks as though she’s trying to hide a fond smile at how captivated the three of them are at Carol’s words.

“The buildings were covered with tinted glass, and when the light caught them they shone thousands of different colours,” Carol goes on. “There were lakes and fountains scattered throughout the city, throwing out sprays of water that glitter in the sunlight. Children ran through the city streets or fished for rusted units in the fountains, only to make a wish and toss them back in again. Part of the city was built on the water, and bridges crossed the indigo depths everywhere, looking like threads woven across a cloth from above. The Nova Corps were constantly monitoring the city from above, and when you saw their ships soaring overhead at night, you could almost pretend the stars had come to life.”

There’s a moment of silence after Carol finishes before Morgan squeals with delight. “I _told_ you she’s good at stories!”

“That sounds amazing,” Peter whispers, and even though he’s been slightly apprehensive about space since returning from Titan, his worries seem to disappear now in light of Carol’s words.

“It is,” Carol agrees, then corrects herself darkly. “It _was._ Thanos wiped out half of the population of Xandar when he attacked them to steal the Power Stone. Much of its beauty has been lost beneath the rubble.” She jiggles Morgan on her knee, her tone lightening. “But they’ll rebuild. Someday, Xandar will be as beautiful as it used to be - beautiful in a different way, maybe, but beautiful nonetheless.”

Morgan jumps off Carol’s lap and tugs her hand. “Can you take me flying?” she begs. “Please, _pretty_ please?” She turns a puppy-eyed gaze on Peter. “And you promised you’d let me try your web shooters! Can you take me swinging, too?”

Peter can’t resist her brown-eyed gaze and opens his mouth to say yes, but Carol’s made of sterner stuff and says, “You’ll have to ask your mom. She’s the boss around here.”

Morgan turns her eyes to Pepper pleadingly. Pepper’s clearly immune to Morgan’s charm too, because she says, “Alright, but help me pack away breakfast first.”

“Okay.” Morgan agrees, hurrying to help take plates to the kitchen counter. Peter lifts her up to help her put the bottle of maple syrup back on the top shelf of the cupboard. When they finish, Morgan breaks into a toothy smile. “Come on, come on, let’s go!”

Morgan tugs Carol outside and Pepper and May follow. Peter hesitates, then turns toward his room.

If he’s going to take Morgan for her first swing, he’s going to do it properly.

A minute later he’s standing in front of the mirror in his room, staring at his reflection. His breath catches in his throat; his heart thunders in his ears.

This is the first time he’s worn the suit since Tony died.

He squeezes his eyes shut for a moment as memories threaten to overwhelm him. Titan, the compound battle, dust and rubble and the glow of the stones on Tony’s hand. Blood and dirt and tears and screams -

_No. Focus on the good._

Seeing the Iron Spider suit for the first time at the Avengers facility.

The suit catching him as he fell from the donut ship.

Tony’s hands touching his shoulders, his voice declaring _You’re an Avenger now._

The four metal spider legs unfolding from the suit as he caught Doctor Strange from being flung into the abyss of space.

Tony’s arms around him as they hugged on the battlefield, his hands gripping the back of the suit, Peter’s face buried in his shoulder, holding each other like they’d never let go again.

Yeah, the suit has seen bad times.

But it has also seen good ones.

He slowly makes his way back through the house and pushes open the front door. He walks to the top step of the porch and stands there, just watching.

Morgan’s clinging to Carol's back as she skims low over the lake, her entire body giving off a faint shimmering glow. Morgan's squeals of delight can be heard even from the lake shore, and as Peter watches the little Stark stretches out a hand and trails it in the water, sending droplets flying into the air like tiny diamonds. Pepper and May are watching from the lake shore and laughing at Morgan's delight.

As Peter stands there watching them - watching his _family_ \- May seems to sense his presence and turns. She smiles, her expression somehow filled with both joy and deep sadness. She holds out her hand.

Peter walks down the steps and takes it.

Peter doesn’t let go of May's hand until Carol touches back down in front of them and Morgan slides off her back, her eyes shining and her hair tousled by the wind. "Mommy, Mommy! Did you see me? I was flying!" she says gleefully. 

Morgan turns towards Peter, and she seems to notice him in the suit for the first time. Her eyes widen and her mouth falls slightly open. "Woah," she whispers. Her eyes are shining. "Take me swinging! Please?"

Peter grins at her, genuine happiness rising to fill the emptiness in his chest. "You bet."

Moments later Peter's swinging out over the lake for the first time in months, Morgan clinging to his side. His Iron Spider suit flashes in the sunlight, and though he doesn't know it, for a second he takes Pepper’s breath away, because she can almost imagine it isn't Spider-Man but Iron Man soaring through the air, the red and gold of his metallic armour gleaming in the perfect morning sun.

Peter deposits Morgan back on the bank five minutes later, and Peter thinks he's rarely seen the little girl's face so flushed with happiness as he did while they were up in the air. _She's a Stark through and through,_ he realises fondly. _She belongs to the skies._

He turns to May, a mischievous smile on his face. "Your turn."

May stares at him uncomprehendingly. "What?"

"Your turn," he repeats. "Come on, May," he pleads, when she looks doubtful. "It'll be fun!"

"Go on, May," Pepper laughs.

Peter turns his grin to Pepper. "You too, Mrs Stark," he says, his eyes glowing with excitement. "Last time I checked, you had a suit, too."

He instantly regrets it: he sees the slight fall of Pepper’s face, the darkness that creeps into her gaze, because, like him, she hasn't worn the suit since Tony died. 

But the smile returns to her face quicker than it did to Peter's, and she pushes the darkness away. "Only if you promise to never call me 'Mrs Stark' again. It makes me feel so old," she complains, a note of amusement in her voice.

Peter grins, trying to push down the rush of guilt. He turns to May. "You ready?" he asks.

May makes a face at him and smiles nervously. "I guess?" She wraps her arms around Peter’s chest. "If you drop me, you're grounded for a month," she warns.

Peter laughs. "I won't drop you, May. I promise."

He brings up his hand, fires off a web, and leaps into the air.

He hears May's gasp and feels her arms tighten around him. He fires another web, and another, until they're swinging at a steady pace through the trees.

"Oh my God, oh my God," he can hear May chanting under her breath. "Oh my God…"

Peter laughs. The wind whips at his exposed face and brings tears to his eyes, but he doesn't care. He makes sure May’s clinging onto him tightly, then shouts, "Hang on!" above the rushing of the wind.

"What do you mean, ha - " May begins to shout back, but her words turn to a scream as Peter lets go of the web and they plummet suddenly towards the lake.

 _"Peter!"_ May shrieks, but Peter just laughs and shoots off a web at the very last minute, catching them just before they hit the lake but close enough so that their feet skim the surface. May is clinging to him desperately, letting out small shrieks every time Peter lets them drop unexpectedly. Peter, on the other hand, is having the time of his life. He lives for this: the swoop of his stomach when he freefalls and the rush of air in his face.

For the first time in months, he feels _alive_ again.

Peter finally swings back to the lake house, landing lightly on his feet. May lets go of him and tries to hide how hard she's trembling. "Were you _trying_ to kill us?" she pants.

A beam splits Peter’s face. "Don't worry so much, May," he says. "I had it all under control. We were completely safe."

May looks dubious, but she's smiling, and Peter knows she's had more fun that she cares to admit. "I can't believe you do that every night."

Peter shrugs, unable to hide the grin on his face. 

He turns around and comes face-to-face with Carol, who raises one eyebrow at him. "It's _your_ turn now," she says.

Peter blinks in surprise. "W-what?"

Carol tips her head upwards. "Don't you wanna come for a fly, Spider-boy?" she asks.

Peter's eyes widen. "Wait - you're serious?" When Carol nods, he freaks out. "No way! Oh, this is awesome! Yes! Yes, please!"

_I'm gonna fly with Captain freaking Marvel._

Carol smiles. "Hope you can hold on tight, Peter. It's gonna be one hell of a ride."

Peter practically dances on the spot with excitement.

He moves next to her, activating his nanotech mask, and Carol wraps one arm around his waist. "Hold on," she says, and then her fists and feet glow with energy and she shoots into the sky.

Peter screams with pure exhilaration. Even when he flew with Tony, clinging to the Iron Man suit as his mentor soared through the sky, he'd never flown so fast nor felt so much raw power as the stardust that seems to glow around Carol. He's glad he activated his mask: they're jettisoning through the sky so fast, they've already passed through the lowest of the cloud layers.

"This is awesome!" he yells, and although he can barely hear anything over the wind thundering in his ears, he thinks he hears Carol laughing.

They're flying so high, and the air is growing steadily colder around them, but Peter’s suit protects him from the worst of it and the energy glowing around Carol's body is faintly warm. They pass through another cloud layer - Peter thinks he sees a plane in the distance - and keep going, up and up and up. Peter would have reached out a hand to touch the clouds as they soared past, but they're going so fast that by the time he thinks of it, they've well and truly left the clouds behind.

Carol slows to a stop as they reach the outer edges of the atmosphere. It's cold and dark up here, and when Peter looks down, the Earth seems very far away, seeming to glow faintly. When he looks up, he can see straight into space. The stars look as far away as ever, but they're clearer up here, and Peter can see so many more than he could see from the ground. 

"It's amazing up here," Peter whispers, barely noticing the chill through his suit. He feels tempted to take his mask off, but the air is _extremely_ thin up here and he's not planning on suffocating today. He's a little stunned that he survived the trip, but hey, he's got weird DNA, and honestly, he shouldn't be that surprised at the stunts his body can pull off.

"Isn't it?" Carol agrees. "I come up here sometimes to think. Space is pretty empty, and the cloud layers can be really heavy sometimes, but up here it's just...in between."

Peter giggles. When Carol glances at him, he explains, "Sorry. It's just...a few years ago I was only a regular teenager from Queens, and now...now I'm a superhero, and I've just been flown half to space, and I'm floating at the edge of the atmosphere and Captain Marvel is talking to me about cloud layers. It's kinda unbelievable."

Carol grins. "Yeah. Life can be pretty unbelievable sometimes." She glances at him. "Wanna go back down?"

"Can we stay a little longer?" Peter asks. _Can we stay here forever?_ he wants to say.

It's so easy to forget about everything up here. To forget about the grief that hangs over them like a cloud; to forget about school and Flash, and that weird kid called Brad who's been shooting MJ funny looks recently; to forget about responsibility and the expectation that everyone is piling on his shoulders. Up here he can just _exist_. 

Like Carol said, up here it is just _in-between_.

And that's why he can't stay, he realises. Because while _in-between_ is nice, it's not real. Real life is back down there, miles below his dangling feet, with May and Pepper and Morgan. With Ned and MJ. With the memories of Tony and Nat. With Flash, and weird-kid Brad, and school, and academic decathlon, and that trip to Europe that his class is planning, and criminals in Queens, and Nick Fury, and -

"Let's go home," he says to Carol, and Carol’s smile lights up her face as brightly as the energy that surrounds her as she turns to take them back down to Earth.

Carol and Peter are just touching down on the lake shore when something streaks from the trees. Something Peter hasn't seen for months. Something Peter can't quite believe is real at first, because when she said yes, Peter thought she was joking.

Rescue soars into the sky, her armour gleaming radiant gold and purple-blue, the eyes of her mask glowing. 

Peter thinks she's never looked more beautiful.

Morgan is shrieking with delight, jumping up and down on the spot. "That's my Mom!" she squeals. "That's _my Mom!"_

"Come on!" Carol sweeps Morgan into her arms, grinning. "Let's go and catch her!"

As the two rocket away from the lake shore, Peter turns to May, smiling. "You coming?" he asks. "Promise I won't drop you."

May barely hesitates before stepping into his arms. _When did my aunt become such a daredevil?_ Peter wonders, as he fires a web into the air and their feet leave the ground.

Five minutes later, as he swings through the air with May at his side, he imagines the scene as a whole, and the thought of it takes his breath away:

Rescue, zipping through the sky with the same agility she had on that battlefield two months ago, looking like Iron Man reborn. Carol, her blonde hair ruffled by the wind, her red-and-blue suit glowing faintly with energy. Morgan, clutched in Carol's arms, laughing with sheer excitement as they swoop after Pepper. May, her long hair swirling around her face, smiling despite her fear as she and Peter swing over the lake. And Peter himself, grinning more widely than he has in months, whooping with delight, arms flexing as he lets loose web after web. The sky is theirs and theirs alone.

"Hey, kid!" Pepper calls, repulsors whining as she slides to a stop in the air beside him. "Up for a ride?"

"You bet!" Peter replies. He hears May let out a cross between a shriek and a laugh as he slings a web at Rescue's armour.

Then Rescue fires her repulsors and Peter and May are flying through the air, wind tousling May's hair crazily. The sky is bright, bright blue; the air is filled with the sound of laughter. Peter wishes he could live in this moment forever.

But life goes on. Life always goes on.

And Peter thinks he's okay with that.

He also thinks - no, he _knows_ \- that if Tony was here, he'd be smiling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading ❤


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The finale.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So guys, this is it. The final chapter.
> 
> I'm a little sad to be finishing this fic, bc I've loved writing this so much and hearing the response from you all has been so, so wonderful. Hopefully you've connected just that little more with Peter the way I have through writing this ❤ If you have, then I've done my job here.
> 
> Thank you so much to everyone who has left me such amazing feedback and who has clicked the kudos button to let me know how you felt about this!! I'm so, so grateful, especially to the amazing people who have given me ideas and inspired me to continue writing. I love you guys ❤
> 
> I hope you enjoy this chapter and I hope you've enjoyed this fic overall. This one's a bit shorter than most of the others, but I hope it draws this fic to a conclusion satisfactorily. 
> 
> Once again, thank you so much.

"Maybe you have to know the darkness before you can appreciate the light." **— Madeleine L'Engle**

 

 

It’s become a sort of routine now, one that Peter can’t quite pinpoint when it started.

Every night, Peter slips out of his window and onto the roof of his apartment. It’s comforting, in a way. He’s always liked it up there – liked being able to look out across Queens, the sky like a black blanket wrapped securely around the city, always there but not diminishing the shine of the city lights, like millions of fireflies in the blackness. When he lies back on the cold concrete, his feet dangling over the side of the building, he stares up into the dark sky.

He doesn’t know what he’s searching for, but sometimes, if he looks hard enough, he can see faint stars, glittering far away. Sometimes they scare him – he’s _been_ to space, he knows a little piece of what’s up there – but other times he stares up at them and wonders. Wonders what and who else is out there, staring up at the same sky.

There’s an odd kind of quiet up on the roof. The city is anything _but_ quiet – sirens wail, people shout, alarms go off, tires screech, horns honk, music blares distantly – yet Peter feels strangely peaceful up there. He’s surrounded by millions of people, in the biggest city in America, yet he’s completely alone.

Maybe not completely. As he sits up, he can hear May humming to herself in their apartment three floors down, and smell the faint scent of something burning on the stove. _Takeout again tonight_ , Peter thinks, smiling to himself. In a few minutes, Peter will join her back in their apartment, and they'll eat dinner and laugh over the day's antics before Peter suits up and heads out to fulfil the role of Queens' very own friendly neighborhood crime-stopper.

Peter draws a deep breath and lets it go, the night breeze ruffling his hair and carrying his breath away with it. He closes his eyes and lets a tear slide slowly down his cheek, glistening as it catches the city lights. He misses them on nights like this.

Yet it’s on nights like this that he feels closest to them, in a way. Peter can almost sense them, as though they’re sitting right next to him just out of sight, just out of reach. When he closes his eyes, he can imagine them right beside him.

_Natasha sits on his left, her legs slung over the edge of the roof, hanging in mid-air. Her red hair glows like flame even in the darkness, the blonde ends looking like the flame has been dipped in snow._ _Her head is tilted slightly as she stares up at the stars._

_Tony sits on his right, close enough that Peter can almost imagine Tony’s arm brushing his as he shifts slightly. Tony’s hair looks black in the darkness, but his eyes sparkle brightly, the city lights reflected three thousand times over in his eyes. All of his walls are down; his expression is warm and relaxed, his gaze soft._

Peter lets out a sigh. His eyes are still closed. If he imagines hard enough, he can see Tony smile, see Nat glance over at them fondly. If he imagines hard enough, he can feel Tony sling an arm around his shoulders, hear his deep, warm laugh, see the sparkle in Nat’s eyes.

When Peter opens his eyes, they’re gone.

But…they’re not gone completely. They’re still there, somehow. Not like ghosts, more like…memories. Hovering on the edge on his consciousness, so close yet so far away from him.

Peter glances up at the night sky. A plane soars through the darkness, the blinking lights on its wings the only sign of its passing. If Peter narrows his eyes, he can almost pretend it’s Iron Man, the eyes of his mask glowing, the arc reactor shining like a beacon as he streaks through the darkness like a shooting star.

He can’t seem to get them out of his mind, which isn’t always a bad thing. Peter seems to see them everywhere he goes: in the murals popping up on walls across New York; in the redheaded woman who passes him on the street; in the sleek car which drives past Peter as he walks home from school; in the distant sound of someone’s laugh, which for a heartbeat sounds so familiar Peter stops just to listen. Tony and Nat might not be _here_ anymore, but Peter knows they will never truly be gone.

 

 

And maybe nothing _will_ ever be the same again.

But Peter’s coming to realise that maybe that's not as bad as he thought.

Maybe it’s time to start a new chapter, to turn a new page.

Because turning a new page doesn’t mean forgetting the story that comes before. Turning a new page simply keeps the story going.

Peter imagines the new page spreading out before him, full of wonder, and hope, and love, and possibilities. Endless, limitless possibilities.

Some will be good.

Some will be bad.

But Peter knows that whatever happens, he is never, ever going to forget Natasha Romanoff.

Peter knows that whatever happens, he is never, ever going to forget Tony Stark.

And if Peter listens hard enough, he can almost hear Natasha’s voice, amused and chiding, telling him _Your aunt’s calling you for dinner, Peter._ He can almost hear her soft footsteps behind him as she stands to go back inside, imagine how well her black suit blends into the night behind her but how brightly her eyes are shining.

And if Peter tries hard enough, he can almost feel Tony’s hand ruffling his curls, almost imagine Tony pulling Peter against him for a hug before climbing to his feet and holding out a hand. He can almost hear Tony’s voice, full of warmth and love and pride, saying _You did good, kid._

_Ad astra per aspera,_ Carol's voice whispers in the back of his mind. _Through hardships to the stars._

And maybe he's not quite there yet, but Peter knows that somehow, someday, he's going to reach the stars. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading, commenting, kudos-ing...thank you all for everything!
> 
> BTW, did anyone pick up the subtle-not-so-subtle Far From Home references in the previous chapter? ;) (If you haven't seen FFH yet - see it!!! It's amazing!!!)
> 
> Once again thank you!! ❤

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you SO MUCH for reading, I really appreciate everyone who takes the time to read my fics. I hope you enjoyed it...if you have suggestions or anything to say, I'd be really grateful to hear it :) I switched from past to present tense halfway through, so if i mixed anything up, lemme know and I'll fix it.
> 
> I don't know how many chapters there are going to be or what my posting schedule is yet, although I've got most of it planned out but just need to tweak some parts here and there.
> 
> Once again, thank you for reading ❤


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